Life Seems Like A Haunted Wood, Where

Tis True Among Fields And Woods I Sing, Aloof From Cities--that My Poor Strains Were Born, Like The Simple Flowers You Bring, In English Meadows And English Lanes.

Have You Never, When Waves Were Breaking, Watched Children At Sport On The Beach, With Their Little Feet Tempting The Foam-fringe, Till With Stronger And Further Reach Than They Dreamed Of, A Billow Comes Bursting, How They Turn And Scamper And Screech!

No One Can Rightly Call His Garden His Own Unless He Himself Made It.

Never Did Form More Fairy Thread The Dance Than She Who Scours The Hills To Find It Flowers; Never Did Sweeter Lips Chained Ears Entrance Than Hers That Move, True To Its Striking Hours; No Hands So White E'er Decked The Warrior's Lance, As Those Which Tend Its Lamp As Darkness Lours; And Never Since Dear Christ Expired For Man, Had Holy Shrine So Fair A Sacristan.

Where Has Thou Been All The Dumb Winter Days When Neither Sunlight Was Nor Smile Of Flowers, Neither Life, Nor Love, Nor Frolic, Only Expanse Melancholic, With Never A Note Of Thy Exhilarating Lays?