For all its flowers and trailing b… Its singing birds and streams, This valley’s not the blissful spo… The paradise, it seems. I don’t forget a man I met

He begged and shuffled on; Sometimes he stopped to throw A bit and benison To sparrows in the snow, And clap a frozen ear

I saw with open eyes Singing birds sweet Sold in the shops For people to eat, Sold in the shops of

The morning that my baby came They found a baby swallow dead, And saw a something, hard to name, Flit moth-like over baby’s bed. My joy, my flower, my baby dear

The book was dull, its pictures As leaden as its lore, But one glad, happy picture Made up for all and more: ’Twas that of you, sweet peasant,

See an old unhappy bull, Sick in soul and body both, Slouching in the undergrowth Of the forest beautiful, Banished from the herd he led,

Sour fiend, go home and tell the… For once you met your master, - A man who carried in his soul Three charms against disaster, The Devil and disaster.

The old gilt vane and spire receiv… The last beam eastward striking; The first shy bat to peep at eve Has found her to his liking. The western heaven is dull and gre…

If you could bring her glories bac… You gentle sirs who sift the dust And burrow in the mould and must Of Babylon for bric-a-brac; Who catalogue and pigeon-hole

Babylon where I go dreaming When I weary of to-day, Weary of a world grown gray. God loves an idle rainbow, No less than laboring seas.

Now one and all, you Roses, Wake up, you lie too long! This very morning closes The Nightingale his song; Each from its olive chamber

‘Twould ring the bells of Heaven The wildest peal for years, If Parson lost his senses And people came to theirs, And he and they together

The world’s gone forward to its la… And dropt an old man done with by… To sit alone among the bats and st… At miles and miles and miles of mo… Lit only with last shreds of dying…