Classic Poem

Along the Hills, height unto height
Tosses the dappled light,
Rills in a torrent flow,
And cuckoo calls beyond the third hedgerow.
Young winds nothing can quell
Scale the wild-chestnut citadel,
Again to make
Its thousand fairy white pagodas shake.
Up many a lane
The blue vervain
A coverlid hath featly spread
For the bees' bed,
That those tired sylvan thieves
May lie most soft on the sweet and scalloped leaves.
And by to-morrow morn
Bright agrimony, in the thickets born,
Will high uphold
Each cinquefoil of plain gold;
Dogwood in white will hood herself apace,
And betony flaunt a varied gypsy mace,
And copper pimpernel, the truest clock,
On some waste common, by a rock
Her small dark-centred wheel draw in
Long, long ere dusk begin.

This day
Of infinite May
Is far more fitly yours than ours,
O spirit-bodied flowers!
What heart disordered sore
Comes through the greenwood door,
Shall for your sake
Find sap and soil and dew, and shall not break;
And hearts beneath no ban
Will in your sight some penance do for man,
Poor lagging man, content to be
Sick with the impact of eternity,
Who might keep step with you in the low grass,
Best part of one strange pageant made in joy to pass!
Not ye, not ye, the privilege disown
To flourish fair and fall fair, and be strewn
Deep in that Will of God, where blend
The origin of beauty and the end.