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IN the pleasant orchard closes,

"God bless all our gains," say we;

But "May God bless all our losses,"

Better suits with our degree.

Listen, gentle-ay, and simple! Listen, children on the knee!

II.

Green the land is, where my daily
Steps in jocund childhood played-
Dimpled close with hill and valley,
Dappled very close with shade;

Summer-snow of apple-blossoms, running up from glade to glade.

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Sideway from the tree-locked valley, to the airy upland crest.

IV.

Small the wood is, green with hazels,

And, completing the ascent,

Where the wind blows and sun dazzles,

Thrills in leafy tremblement ;

Like a heart that, after climbing, beateth quickly through con

tent

V.

Not a step the wood advances
O'er the open hill-top's bound:

There, in green arrest, the branches

See their image on the ground:

You may walk beneath them smiling, glad with sight and glad with sound.

VI.

For you hearken on your right hand,
How the birds do leap and call

In the greenwood, out of sight and

Out of reach and fear of all;

And the squirrels crack the filberts, through their cheerful

madrigal.

VII.

On your left, the sheep are cropping
The slant grass and daisies pale;

And five apple-trees stand, dropping
Separate shadows toward the vale,

Over which, in choral silence, the hills look you their "All hail!"

VIII.

Far out, kindled by each other,
Shining hills on hills arise;

Close as brother leans to brother,

When they press beneath the eyes

Of some father praying blessings from the gifts of paradise.

IX.

While beyond, above them mounted,
And above their woods also,

Malvern hills, for mountains counted
Not unduly, loom a-row-

Keepers of Piers Plowman's visions, through the sunshine and

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Yet, in childhood, little prized I
That fair walk and far survey:

'Twas a straight walk, unadvised by

The least mischief worth a nay—

Up and down—as dull as grammar on the eve of holiday.

XI.

But the wood, all close and clenching
Bough in bough and root in root,-
No more sky (for over-branching)

At your head than at your foot,

Oh, the wood drew me within it, by a glamour past dispute.

XII.

Few and broken paths showed through it,

Where the sheep had tried to run,—

Forced with snowy wool to strew it

Round the thickets, when anon

They, with silly thorn-pricked noses, bleated back into the sun.

*The Malvern Hills of Worcestershire are the scene of Langlande's visions, and thus present the earliest classic ground of English poetry.

XIII.

But my childish heart beat stronger
Than those thickets dare to grow:
I could pierce them! I could longer
Travel on, methought, than so.

Sheep for sheep-paths! braver children climb and creep where they would go.

XIV.

And the poets wander, said I,

Over places all as rude!

Bold Rinaldo's lovely lady

Sate to meet him in a wood

Rosalinda, like a fountain, laughed out pure with solitude.

XV.

And if Chaucer had not travelle

Through a forest by a well,

He had never dreamt nor marvelled

At those ladies fair and fell

Who lived smiling without loving, in their island-citadel.

XVI.

Thus I thought of the old singers,
And took courage from their song,
Till my little struggling fingers

Tore asunder gyve and thong

Of the lichens which entrapped me, and the barrier branches strong.

XVII.

On a day, such pastime keeping,

With a fawn's heart debonair,

Under-crawling, overleaping

Thorns that prick and boughs that bear,

I stood suddenly astonished-I was gladdened unaware.

XVIII.

From the place I stood in, floated
Back the covert dim and close;

And the open ground was coated

Carpet-smooth with grass and moss,

And the blue-bell's purple presence signed it worthily across.

XIX.

Here a linden-tree stood, brightening
All adown its silver rind;

For, as some trees draw the lightning,

So this tree, unto my mind,

Drew to earth the blessed sunshine, from the sky where it was shrined.

XX.

Tall the linden-tree, and near it
An old hawthorn also grew;
And wood-ivy like a spirit

Hovered dimly round the two,

Shaping thence that Bower of beauty, which I sing of thus to you.

XXI.

'Twas a bower for garden fitter,
Than for any woodland wide.
Though a fresh and dewy glitter

Struck it through, from side to side,

Shaped and shaven was the freshness, as by garden-cunning plied.

XXII.

Oh, a lady might have come there,

Hooded fairly like her hawk,

With a book or lute in summer,

And a hope of sweeter talk,

Listening less to her own music, than for footsteps on the walk.

XXIII.

But that bower appeared a marvel
In the wildness of the place!

With such seeming art and travail,

Finely fixed and fitted was

Leaf to leaf, the dark-green ivy, to the summit from the base.

XXIV.

And the ivy, veined and glossy,
Was enwrought with eglantine;
And the wild hop fibred closely,

And the large-leaved columbine,

Arch of door and window mullion did right sylvanly entwine.

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