Under cool elm-trees floats the distant stream, Moveless as air; and o'er the vast warm earth The fathomless daylight seems to stand and dream, A liquid cool elixir--all its girth Bound with faint haze, a frail transparency, Whose lucid purple barely veils and fills The utmost valleys and the thin last hills, Nor mars one whit their perfect clarity.
Thus without grief the golden days go by, So soft we scarcely notice how they wend, And like a smile half happy, or a sigh, The summer passes to her quiet end; And soon, too soon, around the cumbered eaves Sly frosts shall take the creepers by surprise, And through the wind-touched reddening woods shall rise October with the rain of ruined leaves.
With what doubting eyes, oh sparrow, Thou regardest me, Underneath yon spray of yarrow, Dipping cautiously.
Fear me not, oh little sparrow, Bathe and never fear, For to me both pool and yarrow And thyself are dear.
Think not, oh master of the well-tilled field, This earth is only thine; for after thee, When all is sown and gathered and put by, Comes the grave poet with creative eye, And from these silent acres and clean plots, Bids with his wand the fancied after-yield, A second tilth and second harvest, be, The crop of images and curious thoughts.
No wind there is that either pipes or moans; The fields are cold and still; the sky Is covered with a blue-gray sheet Of motionless cloud; and at my feet The river, curling softly by, Whispers and dimples round its quiet gray stones.
Along the chill green slope that dips and heaves The road runs rough and silent, lined With plum-trees, misty and blue-gray, And poplars pallid as the day, In masses spectral, undefined, Pale greenish stems half hid in dry gray leaves.
And on beside the river's sober edge A long fresh field lies black. Beyond, Low thickets gray and reddish stand, Stroked white with birch; and near at hand, Over a little steel-smooth pond, Hang multitudes of thin and withering sedge.
Across a waste and solitary rise A ploughman urges his dull team, A stooped gray figure with prone brow That plunges bending to the plough With strong, uneven steps. The stream Rings and re-echoes with his furious cries.
Sometimes the lowing of a cow, long-drawn, Comes from far off; and crows in strings Pass on the upper silences. A flock of small gray goldfinches, Flown down with silvery twitterings, Rustle among the birch-cones and are gone.