If I but knew the way thereto,
Three days long would I wander
And pick a handful of the weed
And drink it steeped in honey,
That so I might forget your mouth
A thousand times that kissed me.
Recollection.
Hawthorn above, as pale as frost,
Against the paling sky is lost:
On the pool's dark sheet below,
The candid water-daisies glow.
As I came up and saw from far
The water littered, star on star,
I thought the may had left its hedge
To float upon the pool's dark edge.
The Holiday.
The world's great ways unclose
Through little wooded hills:
An air that stirs and stills,
Dies sighing where it rose
Or flies to sigh again
In elms, whose stately rows
Receive the summer rain,
And clouds, clouds, clouds go by,
A drifting cavalry,
In squadrons that disperse
And troops that reassemble
And now they pass and now
Their glittering wealth disburse
On tufted grass a-tremble
And lately leafing bough.
Thus through the shining day
We'll love or pass away
Light hours in golden sleep,
With clos'd half-sentient eyes
And lids the light comes through,
As sheep and flowers do
Who no new toils devise,
While shining insects creep
About us where we lie
Beneath a pleasant sky,
In fields no trouble fills,
Whence, as the traveller goes,
The world's great ways unclose
Through little wooded hills.