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Or a cloudy violet clearing to blue,
I could look on it forever.

Wheel, wheel through the sunshine,
Wheel, wheel through the shadow;
There must be odors round the pine,
There must be balm of breathing kine,
Somewhere down in the meadow.
Must I choose? Then anchor me there
Beyond the beckoning poplars, where
The larch is snooding her flowery hair
With wreaths of morning shadow.

Among the thicket hazels of the brake
Perchance some nightingale doth shake
His feathers, and the air is full of song;
In those old days, when I was young
He used to sing on yonder garden tree,
Beside the nursery.

Ah, I remember how I loved to wake,

and strong,

And find him singing on the selfsame bough (I know it even now)

Where since the flit of bat,

In ceaseless voice he sat,

Trying the spring night over, like a tune,

Beneath the vernal moon;

And while I listed long,
Day rose, and still he sang,
And all his stanchless song,
As something falling unaware,

Fell out of the tall trees he sang among,

Fell ringing down the ringing morn, and rang, Rang like a golden jewel down a golden stair.

Is it too early? I hope not.

But wheel me to the ancient oak,

On this side of the meadow;

Let me hear the raven's croak
Loosened to an amorous note
In the hollow shadow.

Let me see the winter snake
Thawing all his frozen rings
On the bank where the wren sings.
Let me hear the little bell,
Where the red-wing, topmast high,
Looks toward the northern sky,
And jangles his farewell.
Let us rest by the ancient oak,
And see his net of shadow,
His net of barren shadow,

Like those wrestlers' nets of old,
Hold the winter dead and cold,
Hoary winter, white and cold,
While all is green in the meadow.

And when you 've rested, brother mine,

Take me over the meadow;

Take me along the level crown
Of the bare and silent down,
And stop by the ruined tower.
On its green scarp, by and by,
I shall smell the flowering thyme,

On its wall the wall-flower.

In the tower there used to be

A solitary tree.

Take me there, for the dear sake

Of those old days wherein I loved to lie
And pull the melilote,

And look across the valley to the sky,

And hear the joy that filled the warm wide hour
Bubble from the thrush's throat,

As into a shining mere

Rills some rillet trebling clear,

And speaks the silent silver of the lake.
There 'mid cloistering tree-roots, year by year,
The hen-thrush sat, and he, her lief and dear,
Among the boughs did make

A ceaseless music of her married time,

And all the ancient stones grew sweet to hear,
And answered him in the unspoken rhyme
Of gracious forms most musical

That tremble on the wall

And trim its age with airy fantasies

That flicker in the sun, and hardly seem

As if to be beheld were all,

And only to our eyes

They rise and fall,

And fall and rise,

Sink down like silence, or a-sudden stream

As wind-blown on the wind as streams a wedding-chime.

But you are wheeling me while I dream,
And we've almost reached the meadow!

You
may wheel me fast through the sunshine,
You may wheel me fast through the shadow,
But wheel me slowly, brother mine,
Through the green of the sappy meadow;
For the sun, these days have been so fine,
Must have touched it over with celandine,
And the southern hawthorn, I divine,
Sheds a muffled shadow.

There blows

The first primrose,

Under the bare bank roses :

There is but one,

And the bank is brown,

But soon the children will come down,

The ringing children come singing down,

To pick their Easter posies,

And they'll spy it out, my beautiful,

Among the bare brier-roses;

And when I sit here again alone,

The bare brown bank will be blind and dull,

Alas for Easter posies!

But when the din is over and gone,

Like an eye that opens after pain,

I shall see my pale flower shining again;
Like a fair star after a gust of rain
I shall see my pale flower shining again;
Like a glow-worm after the rolling wain
Hath shaken darkness down the lane
I shall see my pale flower shining again;
And it will blow here for two months more,

And it will blow here again next year,

And the year past that, and the year beyond;
And through all the years till my years are o'er
I shall always find it here.

Shining across from the bank above,
Shining up from the pond below,
Ere a water-fly wimple the silent pond,
Or the first green weed appear.
And I shall sit here under the tree,
And as each slow bud uncloses,

I shall see it brighten and brighten to me,
From among the leafing brier-roses,
The leaning leafing roses,

As at eve the leafing shadows grow,
And the star of light and love

Draweth near o'er her airy glades,

Draweth near through her heavenly shades,
As a maid through a myrtle grove.
And the flowers will multiply,

As the stars come blossoming over the sky,
The bank will blossom, the waters blow,
Till the singing children hitherward hie
To gather May-day posies;

And the bank will be bare wherever they go,
As Dawn, the primrose-girl, goes by,
And alas for heaven's primroses!

Blare the trumpet, and boom the gun,
But, O, to sit here thus in the sun,
To sit here, feeling my work is done,
While the sands of life so golden run,

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