The sun, golden and strong,
Leaps: and in flying choirs
The birds make morning song,
Across the morning fires.
Old gardens, where long hours
But find me happier,
Beside the misty flowers
Of purple lavender.
Heaped with a sweet hay load,
Curved, yellow waggons pass
Slow down the high-hedged road;
I watch them from the grass:
A pleasant village noise
Breaks the still air: and all
The summer spirit joys,
Before the first leaves fall.
Red wreckage of the rose,
Over a gusty lawn:
While in the orchard close,
Fruits redden to their dawn.
September's wintering air,
When fruits and flowers have fled
From mountain valleys bare,
Save rowan berries red.
These joys, and such as these,
Are England's and are mine:
Within the English seas,
My days have been divine.
Oh! Hellas lies far hence,
Far the blue Sicel sea:
But England's excellence
Is more than they to me.
1892.