Would that I were away now
From the iron streets and the steel sky,
For filthy are these streets in rain
And hard and dusty dry.
Harshly the 'buses clang their way,
The people are ugly that go by;
They hurry and their mouths are hard
And they are hard of heart and eye.

I stand on the station every day
To catch the crowded, swaying train
But if I only look down the line
I turn away in sudden pain,
For an elm stands at the curve of the rail
That beckons me out, out again,
Whether its leaves flash in the sun
Or the bare boughs drip with rain.

The frost has my small town now
And the street is iron there too,
For it stands in a high cup of the hills,
Right in the north wind's view;
But the steel sky is beautiful there
And the people that hurry there are few
And the bare hedges that catch the sun
Tremble with frosty dew.

Though it be cold, I wish I were there
To see slow winter move
And the elms growing green again
And the blackthorn that I love.
Though spring's late there, it comes at last
In the meadow and the thin beech-grove,
And happy I might lie there in May
With a long green bough above.