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Country
- ‘SWEET are the lanes and the hedges, the fields made red with the clover,
- With tall field‐sorrel, and daisies, and golden buttercups glowing;
- Sweet is the way through the woods, where at sundown maiden and lover
- Linger by stile or by bank where clematis garlands are growing.
- Fair is our world when the dew and the dawn thrill the half‐wakened roses,
- Fair when the corn‐fields grown warm with poppies in noonlight gleaming,
- Fair through the long afternoon, when hedges and hayfields lie dreaming,
- Fair as in lessening light the last convolvulus closes.
- ‘Scent of geranium and musk that in cottage windows run riot,
- Breath from the grass that is down in the meadows each side the highway,
- Slumberous hush of the churchyard where we one day may lie quiet,
- Murmuring wind through the leaves bent over the meadow byway,
- Deeps of cool shadow, and gleams of light on high elmtops shining,
- Such peace in the dim green brake as the town, save in dreams, knows never,
- But in, through, under it all, the old pain follows us ever—
- Ever the old despair, the old unrest and repining.
- ‘Dark is the City’s face; but her children who know her find her
- Mother to them who are brothers, mindful of brotherhood’s duty;
- To each of us, lonely, unhelped, the grave would be warmer, kinder,
- Than the cold unloving face of our world of blossom and beauty.
- Poverty deep and dark cowers under the thatch with the swallows,
- Cruel disease lies hid in the changeful breast of the waters,
- Drink sets snares for our sons, and shame digs graves for our daughters,
- Want and care crush the flower of a youth that no life‐fruit follows.
- ‘What are the woodland sweets, the meadow’s fair flowery treasure,
- When we are hungry and sad, and stupid with work and with sorrows?
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- Leisure for nothing but sleep, and with heart but for sleep in our leisure;
- The work of to‐day still the same as yesterday’s work, and to‐morrow’s.
- Ever the weary round—the treadmill of innocent lives—
- Hopeless and helpless, and bowing our back like a hound’s to the lashes;
- What can seem fair to the eyes that are smarting and sore with the ashes
- Blown from the fires that consume the souls of our children and wives?
- ‘Dreams sometimes we have had of an hour when we might speak plainly,
- Raise the mantle and show how the iron eats into our bosom,
- The rotting root of the Nation, the worm at the heart of its blossom,
- Dreaming we said, “We will speak, when the time for it comes, not vainly.”
- Ah—but the time comes never—Life, we are used to bear it,
- Starved are our brains and grow not, our hands are fit but for toiling,
- If we stretched them out their touch to our masters’ hand would be soiling;
- Weak is our voice with disuse—too weak for our lords to hear it!’
