The Milking Shed

Good Heaven! and can it be, that such a nook
As this can raise such sudden rapture up?
Two dottrel trees, an oak and ash, that stoop
Their aged bodies o'er a little brook,
And raise their sheltering heads above and o'er
A little hovel, raised on four old props
Old as themselves to look on — and what more
Nought but a hawthorn hedge! — and yet one stops
In admiration and in joy, to gaze
Upon these objects, feeling, as I stand,
That nought in all this wide world's thorny ways
Can match this bit of feeling's fairy land.
How can it be? Time owns the potent spell —
I've known it from a boy, and love it well.