The book was dull, its pictures As leaden as its lore, But one glad, happy picture Made up for all and more: ’Twas that of you, sweet peasant,

He came and took me by the hand Up to a red rose tree, He kept His meaning to Himself But gave a rose to me. I did not pray Him to lay bare

He begged and shuffled on; Sometimes he stopped to throw A bit and benison To sparrows in the snow, And clap a frozen ear

If you could bring her glories bac… You gentle sirs who sift the dust And burrow in the mould and must Of Babylon for bric-a-brac; Who catalogue and pigeon-hole

When flighting time is on I go With clap-net and decoy, A-fowling after goldfinches And other birds of joy; I lurk among the thickets of

Reason has moons, but moons not he… Lie mirror’d on the sea, Confounding her astronomers, But O! delighting me. . . . . .

For all its flowers and trailing b… Its singing birds and streams, This valley’s not the blissful spo… The paradise, it seems. I don’t forget a man I met

It’s sixty years ago, the people s… Two village children, neighbours b… One morning played beneath a rotte… That came down crash and caught th… And one was killed and one was lef…

The world’s gone forward to its la… And dropt an old man done with by… To sit alone among the bats and st… At miles and miles and miles of mo… Lit only with last shreds of dying…

“How fared you when you mortal wer… What did you see on my peopled sta… “Oh well enough,” I answered her, “It went for me where mortals are! ”I saw blue flowers and the merlin…

The morning that my baby came They found a baby swallow dead, And saw a something, hard to name, Flit moth-like over baby’s bed. My joy, my flower, my baby dear

‘Twould ring the bells of Heaven The wildest peal for years, If Parson lost his senses And people came to theirs, And he and they together

Sour fiend, go home and tell the… For once you met your master, - A man who carried in his soul Three charms against disaster, The Devil and disaster.

See an old unhappy bull, Sick in soul and body both, Slouching in the undergrowth Of the forest beautiful, Banished from the herd he led,

Eve, with her basket, was Deep in the bells and grass, Wading in bells and grass Up to her knees, Picking a dish of sweet