Binsey Poplars
felled 1879
My aspens dear, whose airy cages quelled,
Quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun,
All felled, felled, are all felled;
Of a fresh and following folded rank
Not spared, not one
That dandled a sandalled
Shadow that swam or sank
On meadow and river and wind-wandering weed-winding bank.
O if we but knew what we do
When we delve or hew-
Hack and rack the growing green!
Since country is so tender
To touch, her being só slender,
That, like this sleek and seeing ball
But a prick will make no eye at all,
Where we, even where we mean
To mend her we end her,
When we hew or delve:
After-comers cannot guess the beauty been.
Ten or twelve, only ten or twelve
Strokes of havoc únselve
The sweet especial scene,
Rural scene, a rural scene,
Sweet especial rural scene.
Related poetry:
- Twelve O'Clock Mother, I do want to leave off my lessons now. I have been at my Book all the morning. You say it is only twelve o’clock. Suppose it isn’t any later; Can’t you ever think it is afternoon when it is only twelve O’clock? I can easily imagine now that the sun has reached the […]...
- The Poplar Field The poplars are felled, farewell to the shade And the whispering sound of the cool colonnade: The winds play no longer and sing in the leaves, Nor Ouse on his bosom their image receives. Twelve years have elapsed since I first took a view Of my favourite field, and the bank where they grew, And […]...
- Lines Unfelt unheard, unseen, I’ve left my little queen, Her languid arms in silver slumber lying: Ah! through their nestling touch, Who – who could tell how much There is for madness – cruel, or complying? Those faery lids how sleek! Those lips how moist! – they speak, In ripest quiet, shadows of sweet sounds: Into […]...
- Then Was My Neophyte Then was my neophyte, Child in white blood bent on its knees Under the bell of rocks, Ducked in the twelve, disciple seas The winder of the water-clocks Calls a green day and night. My sea hermaphrodite, Snail of man in His ship of fires That burn the bitten decks, Knew all His horrible desires […]...
- The Abduction Some things I do not profess To understand, perhaps Not wanting to, including Whatever it was they did With you or you with them That timeless summer day When you stumbled out of the wood, Distracted, with your white blouse torn And a bloodstain on your skirt. “Do you believe?” you asked. Between us, through […]...
- Duns Scotus's Oxford Towery city and branchy between towers; Cuckoo-echoing, bell-swarmèd, lark-charmèd, rook-racked, river-rounded; The dapple-eared lily below thee; that country and town did Once encounter in, here coped and poisèd powers; Thou hast a base and brickish skirt there, sours That neighbour-nature thy grey beauty is grounded Best in; graceless growth, thou hast confounded Rural rural keeping-folk, […]...
- Titine Although I have a car of class, A limousine, I also have a jenny ass I call Titine. And if I had in sober sense To choose between, I know I’d give the preference To sleek Titine. My chauffeur drives my Cadillac In uniform. I wear a worn coat on my back That he would […]...
- Whitsunday Listen sweet Dove unto my song, And spread thy golden wings in me; Hatching my tender heart so long, Till it get wing, and fly away with thee. Where is that fire which once descended On thy Apostles? thou didst then Keep open house, richly attended, Feasting all comers by twelve chosen men. Such glorious […]...
- Laughing Song When the green woods laugh with the voice of joy And the dimpling stream runs laughing by, When the air does laugh with our merry wit, And the green hill laughs with the noise of it. When the meadows laugh with lively green And the grasshopper laughs in the merry scene. When Mary and Susan […]...
- The Science Of The Night I touch you in the night, whose gift was you, My careless sprawler, And I touch you cold, unstirring, star-bemused, That have become the land of your self-strangeness. What long seduction of the bone has led you Down the imploring roads I cannot take Into the arms of ghosts I never knew, Leaving my manhood […]...
- The mob within the heart The mob within the heart Police cannot suppress The riot given at the first Is authorized as peace Uncertified of scene Or signified of sound But growing like a hurricane In a congenial ground....
- Retirement Fresh fields and woods! the Earth’s fair face, God’s foot-stool, and man’s dwelling-place. I ask not why the first Believer Did love to be a country liver? Who to secure pious content Did pitch by groves and wells his tent; Where he might view the boundless sky, And all those glorious lights on high; With […]...
- Pink Champagne (for Digby Fairweather) Not blues in twelve But there is joy And pink champagne, The maker’s music Trading eights In syncopated synergy From Dixieland to Rock ‘n’ Roll, And here the cornet-master Leads in tones A trumpet cannot blow. The sidemen nod their harmonies, Engrossed; Their music coursing Through an energy of swing; Piano-player’s fingers Dancing round the […]...
- Growing Old Somehow the skies don’t seem so blue As they used to be; Blossoms have a fainter hue, Grass less green I see. There’s no twinkle in a star, Dawns don’t seem so gold. . . Yet, of course, I know they are: Guess I’m growing old. Somehow sunshine seems less bright, Birds less gladly sing; […]...
- From Far, From Eve and Morning From far, from eve and morning And yon twelve-winded sky, The stuff of life to knit me Blew hither: here am I. Now for a breath I tarry Nor yet disperse apart Take my hand quick and tell me, What have you in your heart. Speak now, and I will answer; How shall I help […]...
- Making Love To Concrete An upright abutment in the mouth Of the Willis Avenue bridge A beige Honda leaps the divider Like a steel gazelle inescapable Sleek leather boots on the pavement Rat-a-tat-tat best intentions Going down for the third time Stuck in the particular You cannot make love to concrete If you care about being Non-essential wrong or […]...
- The Meeting of the Waters There is not in the wide world a valley so sweet As that vale in whose bosom the bright waters meet; Oh! the last rays of feeling and life must depart, Ere the bloom of that valley shall fade from my heart. Yet it was not that nature had shed o’er the scene Her purest […]...
- The Evening Primrose You know the bloom, unearthly white, That none has seen by morning light- The tender moon, alone, may bare Its beauty to the secret air. Who’d venture past its dark retreat Must kneel, for holy things and sweet, That blossom, mystically blown, No man may gather for his own Nor touch it, lest it droop […]...
- To Simplicity [Inscribed to Lady Duncannon.] SWEET blushing Nymph, who loves to dwell In the dark forest’s silent gloom; Who smiles within the Hermit’s cell, And sighs upon the rustic’s tomb; Who, pitying, sees the busy throng, The slaves of fashion’s giddy sway; Who in a wild and artless song, Warbles the feath’ry hours away. Oft have […]...
- Epitaphium Erotii HERE lies Erotion, whom at six years old Fate pilfered. Stranger (when I too am cold, Who shall succeed me in my rural field), To this small spirit annual honours yield! Bright be thy hearth, hale be thy babes, I crave And this, in thy green farm, the only grave....
- LOVE DISLIKES NOTHING Whatsoever thing I see, Rich or poor although it be, ‘Tis a mistress unto me. Be my girl or fair or brown, Does she smile, or does she frown; Still I write a sweet-heart down. Be she rough, or smooth of skin; When I touch, I then begin For to let affection in. Be she […]...
- On a Primitive Canoe Here, passing lonely down this quiet lane, Before a mud-splashed window long I pause To gaze and gaze, while through my active brain Still thoughts are stirred to wakefulness; because Long, long ago in a dim unknown land, A massive forest-tree, ax-felled, adze-hewn, Was deftly done by cunning mortal hand Into a symbol of the […]...
- Beauty Say not of beauty she is good, Or aught but beautiful, Or sleek to doves’ wings of the wood Her wild wings of a gull. Call her not wicked; that word’s touch Consumes her like a curse; But love her not too much, too much, For that is even worse. O, she is neither good […]...
- Mother’s Smile For my wife, Elizabeth Harris Burch, and my mother, Christine Ena Burch There never was a fonder smile Than mother’s smile, no softer touch Than mother’s touch. So sleep awhile And know she loves you more than “much. ” So more than “much, ” much more than “all. ” Though tender words, these do not […]...
- A Clasp Of Hands SOFT, small, and sweet as sunniest flowers That bask in heavenly heat When bud by bud breaks, breathes, and cowers, Soft, small, and sweet. A babe’s hands open as to greet The tender touch of ours And mock with motion faint and fleet The minutes of the new strange hours That earth, not heaven, must […]...
- Shinto When sorrow lays us low For a second we are saved By humble windfalls Of the mindfulness or memory: The taste of a fruit, the taste of water, That face given back to us by a dream, The first jasmine of November, The endless yearning of the compass, A book we thought was lost, The […]...
- 527. Song-Address to the Woodlark O STAY, sweet warbling woodlark, stay, Nor quit for me the trembling spray, A hapless lover courts thy lay, Thy soothing, fond complaining. Again, again that tender part, That I may catch thy melting art; For surely that wad touch her heart Wha kills me wi’ disdaining. Say, was thy little mate unkind, And heard […]...
- Sonnet V Not undelightful, friend, our rustic ease To grateful hearts; for by especial hap, Deep nested in the hill’s enormous lap, With its own ring of walls and grove of trees, Sits, in deep shelter, our small cottage – nor Far-off is seen, rose carpeted and hung With clematis, the quarry whence she sprung, O mater […]...
- Could Hope inspect her Basis Could Hope inspect her Basis Her Craft were done Has a fictitious Charter Or it has none Balked in the vastest instance But to renew Felled by but one assassin Prosperity...
- The Hand That Signed The Paper The hand that signed the paper felled a city; Five sovereign fingers taxed the breath, Doubled the globe of dead and halved a country; These five kings did a king to death. The mighty hand leads to a sloping shoulder, The finger joints are cramped with chalk; A goose’s quill has put an end to […]...
- Ode Written On The First Of December Tho’ now no more the musing ear Delights to listen to the breeze That lingers o’er the green wood shade, I love thee Winter! well. Sweet are the harmonies of Spring, Sweet is the summer’s evening gale, Pleasant the autumnal winds that shake The many-colour’d grove. And pleasant to the sober’d soul The silence of […]...
- Dream Song 50: In a motion of night they massed nearer my post In a motion of night they massed nearer my post. I hummed a short blues. When the stars went out I studied my weapons system. Grenades, the portable rack, the yellow spout Of the anthrax-ray: in order. Yes, and most Of my pencils were sharp. This edge of the galaxy has often seen A defence […]...
- Peace And sometimes I am sorry when the grass Is growing over the stones in quiet hollows And the cocksfoot leans across the rutted cart-pass That I am not the voice of country fellows Who now are standing by some headland talking Of turnips and potatoes or young corn Of turf banks stripped for victory. Here […]...
- Farm Implements and Rutabagas in a Landscape The first of the undecoded messages read: “Popeye sits In thunder, Unthought of. From that shoebox of an apartment, From livid curtain’s hue, a tangram emerges: a country.” Meanwhile the Sea Hag was relaxing on a green couch: “How Pleasant To spend one’s vacation en la casa de Popeye,” she Scratched Her cleft chin’s solitary […]...
- At the Melting of the Snow There’s a sunny Southern land, And it’s there that I would be Where the big hills stand, In the South Countrie! When the wattles bloom again, Then it’s time for us to go To the old Monaro country At the melting of the snow. To the East or to the West, Or wherever you may […]...
- Nora, the Maid of Killarney Down by the beautiful Lakes of Killarney, Off times I have met my own dear Barney, In the sweet summer time of the year, In the silvery moonlight so clear, I’ve rambled with my sweetheart Barney, Along the green banks of the Lakes of Killarney. The Lakes of Killarney are most lovely to be seen […]...
- Ribblesdale Earth, sweet Earth, sweet landscape, with leavés throng And louchéd low grass, heaven that dost appeal To, with no tongue to plead, no heart to feel; That canst but only be, but dost that long- Thou canst but be, but that thou well dost; strong Thy plea with him who dealt, nay does now deal, […]...
- Dear Harp of my Country Dear Harp of my Country! in darkness I found thee, The cold chain of Silence had hung o’er thee long. When proudly, my own Island Harp, I unbound thee, And gave all thy chords to light, freedom, and song. The warm lay of love and the light note of gladness Have waken’d thy fondest, thy […]...
- A GLEAM OF SUNSHINE This is the place. Stand still, my steed, Let me review the scene, And summon from the shadowy Past The forms that once have been. The Past and Present here unite Beneath Time’s flowing tide, Like footprints hidden by a brook, But seen on either side. Here runs the highway to the town; There the […]...
- Silence and Stealth of Days Silence, and stealth of days! ’tis now Since thou art gone, Twelve hundred hours, and not a brow But clouds hang on. As he that in some cave’s thick damp Lockt from the light, Fixeth a solitary lamp, To brave the night, And walking from his sun, when past That glim’ring ray Cuts through the […]...