Classic Poem

It is no cemented mile-path
Of Rome's imperial day,
That drives over down and valley —
Right onward its ruthless way:

Nor in years of the mine and the furnace
Was it laid by a later hand,
To be one of the veins of iron
Which bear the pulse of the land:-

But the path that I show you, children,
Has an older way of its own,
And took its sweet steps through the valley
Ere Roman and Saxon were known.

It winds like a grassy streamlet
'Twixt hollies and hazels old,
And the palms of silvery velvet,
Where the willow-wren twinkles in gold:

Where the wayside slopes are embosom'd
In gorse and the feathery brake;
Where the round root-stems of the beeches
Coil like a gray old snake:

Where the sky is pierced with the arrows
Of the sweet shrill linnet aloft,
And red robin and black bird answer
With mellower song from the croft;

And the cottages peep in their whiteness
'Mid the holts of the valley wild,
And shine as the smile that lightens
The face of a pensive child;

And little ones stand in the doorway
With their handfuls of cowslip gold,
While the smoke goes white from the hearthstone,
As it went in the days of old:-

And we smile as we see the children
Smile in their valley green;
Our relic spared from Old England;
Our own dear Dorset scene.