Retrospect

Here beside my Paris fire, I sit alone and ponder
All ray life of long ago that lies so far asunder;
'Here, how came I thence? 'I say, and greater grows
the wonder
As I recall the farms and fields and placid hamlets yonder.
See, the meadow-sweet is white against the watercourses,
Marshy lands are kingcup-gay and bright with streams
and sources,

Dew-bespangled shines the hill where half-abloom the
gorse is;
And all the northern fallows steam beneath the ploughing horses.
There 's the red-brick-chimney'd house, the ivied haunt of swallows,
All its garden up and down and full of hills and hollows;
Past the lawn, the sunken fence whose brink the laurel

follows;
And then the knee-deep pasture where the herd for ever
wallows!
So they've clipp'd the lilac bush: a thousand thousand
pities!
'Twas the blue old-fashion'd sort that never grows in
cities.
There we little children play'd and chaunted aimless

ditties,
While oft th' old grandsire looked at us and smiled his
Nunc Dimittis!
Green, O green with ancient peace, and full of sap and
sunny,
Lusty fields of Warwickshire, O land of milk and honey,
Might I live to pluck again a spike of agrimony,
A silver tormentilla leaf or ladysmock upon ye!

Patience! — for I keep at heart your pure and perfect
seeming,
I can see you wide awake as clearly as in dreaming,
Softer, with an inner light, and dearer, to my deeming,
Than when beside your brooks at noon I watch'd the
sallows gleaming!