How cleanly do we feed and lie! Lord! what good hours do we keep! How quietly we sleep!

What peace, what unanimity! How innocent from the lewd fashion Is all our business, all our recreation!

O, how happy here's our leisure!
O, how innocent our pleasure!
O ye valleys! O ye mountains!
O ye groves, and crystal fountains!
How I love, at liberty,

By turns to come and visit yę!

Dear solitude, the soul's best friend,

That man acquainted with himself dost make,
And all his Maker's wonders to attend,
With thee I here converse at will,

And would be glad to do so still,

For it is thou alone that keep'st the soul awake.

How calm and quiet a delight

Is it, alone,

To read and meditate and write,

By none offended, and offending none!

To walk, ride, sit, or sleep at one's own ease;
And, pleasing a man's self, none other to displease.

O my beloved nymph, fair Dove,

Princess of rivers, how I love

Upon thy flowery banks to lie,

And view thy silver stream,

When gilded by a Summer's beam!
And in it all thy wanton fry

Playing at liberty,

And, with my angle, upon them

The all of treachery

I ever learned industriously to try!

Such streams Rome's yellow Tiber cannot show, The Iberian Tagus, or Ligurian Po;

The Retirement

The Maese, the Danube, and the Rhine,
Are puddle-water, all, compared with thine;
And Loire's pure streams yet too polluted are
With thine, much purer, to compare;

The rapid Garonne and the winding Seine
Are both too mean,

Beloved Dove, with thee

To vie priority;

Nay, Tame and Isis, when conjoined, submit,
And lay their trophies at thy silver feet.

O my beloved rocks, that rise

To awe the earth and brave the skies!
From some aspiring mountain's crown
How dearly do I love,

Giddy with pleasure to look down;

1643

And from the vales to view the noble heights above;

O my beloved caves! from dog-star's heat,

And all anxieties, my safe retreat;

What safety, privacy, what true delight,

In the artificial light

Your gloomy entrails make,

Have I taken, do I take!

How oft, when grief has made me fly,

To hide me from society

E'en of my dearest friends, have I,

In your recesses' friendly shade,

All my sorrows open laid,

And my most secret woes intrusted to your privacy!

Lord! would men let me alone,

What an over-happy one

Should I think myself to be

Might I in this desert place,

(Which most men in discourse disgrace)

Live but undisturbed and free!

Here, in this despised recess,

Would I, maugre Winter's cold,

And the Summer's worst excess,

Try to live out to sixty full years old;

And, all the while,

Without an envious eye

On any thriving under Fortune's smile,

Contented live, and then contented die.

Charles Cotton [1630-1687]

THE COUNTRY FAITH

HERE in the country's heart,
Where the grass is green,

Life is the same sweet life

As it e'er hath been.

Trust in a God still lives,

And the bell at morn

Floats with a thought of God

O'er the rising corn.

God comes down in the rain,

And the crop grows tall

This is the country faith

And best of all!

Norman Gale [1862

TRULY GREAT

My walls outside must have some flowers,

My walls within must have some books;
A house that's small; a garden large,
And in it leafy nooks:

A little gold that's sure each week;

That comes not from my living kind,
But from a dead man in his grave,
Who cannot change his mind:

A lovely wife, and gentle too;
Contented that no eyes but mine
Can see her many charms, nor voice
To call her beauty fine:

Where she would in that stone cage live,

A self-made prisoner, with me;

The Cup

While many a wild bird sang around,
On gate, on bush, on tree.

And she sometimes to answer them,
In her far sweeter voice than all;
Till birds, that loved to look on leaves,
Will doat on a stone wall.

With this small house, this garden large,
This little gold, this lovely mate,
With health in body, peace at heart-

Show me a man more great.

William H. Davies [1870

EARLY MORNING AT BARGIS

CLEAR air and grassy lea,

Stream-song and cattle-bell-
Dear man, what fools are we
In prison-walls to dwell!

To live our days apart

From green things and wide skies,

And let the wistful heart

Be cut and crushed with lies!

Bright peaks! And suddenly

Light floods the placid dell,
The grass-tops brush my knee:
A good crop it will be,

So all is well!

O man, what fools are we

In prison-walls to dwell!

Hermann Hagedorn [1882

THE CUP

THE Cup I sing is a cup of gold
Many and many a century old,
Sculptured fair, and over-filled

With wine of a generous vintage, spilled

1645

In crystal currents and foaming tides
All round its luminous, pictured sides.
Old Time enameled and embossed
This ancient cup at an infinite cost.
Its frame he wrought of metal that run
Red from the furnace of the sun.
Ages on ages slowly rolled

Before the glowing mass was cold,

And still he toiled at the antique mold,

Turning it fast in his fashioning hand,
Tracing circle, layer, and band,

Carving figures quaint and strange,

Pursuing, through many a wondrous change,

The symmetry of a plan divine.

At last he poured the lustrous wine,
Crowned high the radiant wave with light,

And held aloft the goblet bright,

Half in shadow, and wreathed in mist

Of purple, amber, and amethyst.

This is the goblet from whose brink
All creatures that have life must drink:
Foemen and lovers, haughty lord,
And sallow beggar with lips abhorred.
The new-born infant, ere it gain

The mother's breast, this wine must drain.
The oak with its subtle juice is fed,
The rose drinks till her cheeks are red,
And the dimpled, dainty violet sips
The limpid stream with loving lips.
It holds the blood of sun and star,
And all pure essences that are:
No fruit so high on the heavenly vine,
Whose golden hanging clusters shine
On the far-off shadowy midnight hills,
But some sweet influence it distils
That slideth down the silvery rills.

Here Wisdom drowned her dangerous thought,

The early gods their secrets brought;