Classic Poem

How beautiful the eve comes in
The grazing kine the village din
Of happy children, cocks and hens
And chickens cheeping in their pens
And hogs that grunt the roots to eat
And dogs asleep on their fore-feet
And sparrows on the mossy thatch
Waiting whatever they may catch
Beneath the oak the old cart shed
There the capon goes to bed
On the old crippled waggon-see
Propped up with an axle-tree
By the wall on broken rail
Tweets red breasted firetail
And their neighbours pied flycatch
Build cobweb nest in the old thatch
Where beesom weed — that high wind leaves
Blossoms and blooms above the eaves
The old cow-crib is mossed and green
As if it just had painted been
The ramping kecks in orchard gaps
Shake like green neighbours in white caps
On which the snail will climb and dwell
For three weeks in its painted shell
There the white nosed " clock a clay"
Red and black spot[t]ed sits all day
Round which the white nosed bee will hum
To which the black nosed bee will come
More than a hundred times a day
Till evening shadows cool in grey
Wormwood, burdock — the cart conceals
Rotting and wanting both the wheels
The battered waggon wanting three
Stands prop't with broken axle-tree
A hen pen with two slats away
And hen and chickens gone astray
A barrow left without a wheel
Since spring, which nettles now conceal
From free stones getting on the moor
The creeping donkeys pass the door
The geese on dunghills clean their quills
And squabble o'er the dainty pills
Thrown out by the huswifes cares
Who supper for her man prepares
Labour returning from its toils
Ditcher that the earth besoils
Hedgers from the wattled thorn
Scaring birdboy with his horn
Who blows it to the wandering moon
And thinks the village knows the tune
The shepherd in the nearly dark
Followed by his dogs gruff bark
The milkmaid tripping through the dew
Singing all the evening through
The owlet through the barn hole peeps
And all the village hides and sleeps.