I peeled bits of straws and I got switches too From the grey peeling willow as idlers do, And I switched at the flies as I sat all alone Till my flesh, blood, and marrow was turned to dry bone. My illness was love, though I knew not the smart, But the beauty of love was the blood of my heart. Crowded places, I shunned them as noises too rude And fled to the silence of sweet solitude. Where the flower in green darkness buds, blossoms, and fades, Unseen of all shepherds and flower-loving maids-- The hermit bees find them but once and away. There I'll bury alive and in silence decay.
I looked on the eyes of fair woman too long, Till silence and shame stole the use of my tongue: When I tried to speak to her I'd nothing to say, So I turned myself round and she wandered away. When she got too far off, why, I'd something to tell, So I sent sighs behind her and walked to my cell. Willow switches I broke and peeled bits of straws, Ever lonely in crowds, in Nature's own laws-- My ball room the pasture, my music the bees, My drink was the fountain, my church the tall trees. Who ever would love or be tied to a wife When it makes a man mad all the days of his life?
Sweet chestnuts brown like soling leather turn; The larch trees, like the colour of the Sun; That paled sky in the Autumn seemed to burn, What a strange scene before us now does run-- Red, brown, and yellow, russet, black, and dun; White thorn, wild cherry, and the poplar bare; The sycamore all withered in the sun. No leaves are now upon the birch tree there: All now is stript to the cold wintry air.
See, not one tree but what has lost its leaves-- And yet the landscape wears a pleasing hue. The winter chill on his cold bed receives Foliage which once hung oer the waters blue. Naked and bare the leafless trees repose. Blue-headed titmouse now seeks maggots rare, Sluggish and dull the leaf-strewn river flows; That is not green, which was so through the year Dark chill November draweth to a close.
Tis Winter, and I love to read indoors, When the Moon hangs her crescent up on high; While on the window shutters the wind roars, And storms like furies pass remorseless by. How pleasant on a feather bed to lie, Or, sitting by the fire, in fancy soar With Dante or with Milton to regions high, Or read fresh volumes we've not seen before, Or oer old Burton's Melancholy pore.