While the forest quakes surprise,
And the wild wind sobs and sighs,
My home rocks as like to fall,
On its pillar green and tall;
When the pattering rain drives by
Clock-a-clay keeps warm and dry.
Day by day and night by night,
All the week I hide from sight;
In the cowslip pips I lie,
In the rain still warm and dry;
Day and night, and night and day,
Red, black-spotted clock-a-clay.
My home shakes in wind and showers,
Pale green pillar topped with flowers,
Bending at the wild wind's breath,
Till I touch the grass beneath;
Here I live, lone clock-a-clay,
Watching for the time of day.
SPRING
Come, gentle Spring, and show thy varied greens
In woods, and fields, and meadows, by clear brooks;
Come, gentle Spring, and bring thy sweetest scenes,
Where peace, with solitude, the loveliest looks;
Where the blue unclouded sky
Spreads the sweetest canopy,
And Study wiser grows without her books.
Come hither, gentle May, and with thee bring
Flowers of all colours, and the wild briar rose;
Come in wind-floating drapery, and bring
Fragrance and bloom, that Nature's love bestows—
Meadow pinks and columbines,
Kecksies white and eglantines,
And music of the bee that seeks the rose.
Come, gentle Spring, and bring thy choicest looks,
Thy bosom graced with flowers, thy face with smiles;
Come, gentle Spring, and trace thy wandering brooks,
Through meadow gates, o'er footpath crooked stiles;
Come in thy proud and best array,
April dews and flowers of May,
And singing birds that come where heaven smiles.
EVENING
In the meadow's silk grasses we see the black snail,
Creeping out at the close of the eve, sipping dew,
While even's one star glitters over the vale,
Like a lamp hung outside of that temple of blue.
I walk with my true love adown the green vale,
The light feathered grasses keep tapping her shoe;
In the whitethorn the nightingale sings her sweet tale,
And the blades of the grasses are sprinkled with dew.
If she stumbles I catch her and cling to her neck,
As the meadow-sweet kisses the blush of the rose:
Her whisper none hears, and the kisses I take
The mild voice of even will never disclose.
Her hair hung in ringlets adown her sweet cheek,
That blushed like the rose in the hedge hung with dew;
Her whisper was fragrance, her face was so meek—
The dove was the type on't that from the bush flew.