Reciprocity

that i may have a body fit to mate with the green fields and stars and streams in spate and clean as clover dew that i may have the courage to confute all fools with silence when they will dispute all fools who will deride that i may know all strict and sinewy art as that in man which is the counterpart lord of thy fiercest pride that somehow this beloved earth may wear a later grace for all the love i bear for some song that i sing that when i die this word may stand for me He had a heart to praise, an eye to see, and beauty was his king.

a shower of green gems on my apple-tree this first morning of may has fallen out of the night to be herald of holiday bright gems of green that fallen there seem fixed and glowing on the air until a flutter of blackbird wings shakes and makes the boughs alive and the gems are now no frozen things but apple-green buds to thrive on sap of my may garden how well the green september globes will tell also my pear-tree has its buds but they are silver yellow like autumn meadows when the floods are silver under willow and here shall long and shapely pears be gathered while the autumn wears and there are sixty daffodils beneath my wall and jealousy it is that kills this world when all the spring's behavior here is spent to make the world magnificent Reciprocity by John Drinkwater.

Read for LibriVox.org. i do not think that skies and meadows are moral or that the fixture of a star comes of a quiet spirit or that trees have wisdom in their windless silences yet these are things invested in my mood with constancy and peace and fortitude that in my troubled season i can cry upon the wide composure of the sky and envy fields and wish that I might be as little daunted as a star-whore tree.

those hours are best when suddenly the voices of the world are still and in that quiet place is heard the voice of one small singing bird alone within his quiet tree when to one field that crowns a hill with but the sky for neighborhood the crowding counties of my brain give all their riches lake and plain cornland and fell and pillared wood when in a hill-top acre bare for the seed's use i am aware of all the beauty that an age of earth has taught my eyes to see when pride and generosity the constant heart and evil rage affection and desire and all the passions of experience are no more tabled in my mind learnings idolatry but find particularity of sense in daily fortitudes that fall from this or that companion or in an angry gossip's word when one man speaks for every one when music lives in one small bird when in a furrowed hill we see all beauty in epitome those hours are best for those belong to the lucidity of song the midlands by john black in the summer night my cotswold hill aslant my window sleeps beneath a sky deep as the bedded violets that fill march woods with dusky passion as i lie abed between cool walls i watch the host of the slow stars lit over gloucester plain and drowsily the habit of these most beloved of english lands moves in my brain while silence holds dominion of the dark save when the foxes from the spinneys bark i see the valleys in their morning mist wreathed under limpid hills in moving light happy with many a yeoman melodist i see the little roads of twinkling white busy with fieldward teams and market gear of rosy men cloth-gaitered who can tell the many-minded changes of the year who know why crops and kine fare ill or well i see the sun persuade the mist away till town and stead are shining to the day i see the wagons move along the rows of ripe and summer breathing clover flower i see the lissom husbandman who knows deep in his heart the beauty of his power as lithely pitched the full heaped fork bids on the harvest home i hear the rickyard fill with gossip as in generations gone while wagon follows wagon from the hill i think how when our seasons all are sealed shall come the unchanging harvest from the field i see the barns and comely manors planned by men who somehow moved in comely thought who with a simple shippen to their hand as men upon some godlike business wrought i see the little cottages that keep their beauty still where since plantagenet have come the shepherds happily to sleep finding the loaves and cups of cider set i see the twisted shepherds brown and old driving at dusk their glimmering sheep to fold and now the valleys that upon the sun broke from their opal veils are veiled again and the last light upon the wolds is done and silence falls on flocks and fields and men and black upon the night i watch my hill and the stars shine and there an owly wing brushes the night and all again is still and from this land of worship that i sing i turn to sleep content that from my sires i draw the blood of england's midmost shires red for librivox dot org blue skies are over cotswold and april snows go by the lasses turn their ribbons for april's in the sky and april is the season when sabbath girls are dressed from rodborough to campden in all their silken best an ankle is a marvel when first the buds are brown and not a lass but knows it from stow to gloucester town and not a girl goes walking along the cotswold lanes but knows men's eyes in april are quicker than their brains It's little that it matters, So long as you're alive, If you're eighteen in April, Or rising sixty-five, When April comes to Amberley With skies of April blue, And Cotswold girls are briding With slyly tilted hue.

that i may have a body fit to mate with the green fields and stars and streams in spate and clean as clover dew that i may have the courage to confute all fools with silence when they will dispute all fools who will deride that i may know all strict and sinewy art as that in man which is the counterpart lord of thy fiercest pride that somehow this beloved earth may wear a later grace for all the love i bear for some song that i sing that when i die this word may stand for me He had a heart to praise, an eye to see, and beauty was his king.

a shower of green gems on my apple-tree this first morning of may has fallen out of the night to be herald of holiday bright gems of green that fallen there seem fixed and glowing on the air until a flutter of blackbird wings shakes and makes the boughs alive and the gems are now no frozen things but apple-green buds to thrive on sap of my may garden how well the green september globes will tell also my pear-tree has its buds but they are silver yellow like autumn meadows when the floods are silver under willow and here shall long and shapely pears be gathered while the autumn wears and there are sixty daffodils beneath my wall and jealousy it is that kills this world when all the spring's behavior here is spent to make the world magnificent Reciprocity by John Drinkwater.

Read for LibriVox.org. i do not think that skies and meadows are moral or that the fixture of a star comes of a quiet spirit or that trees have wisdom in their windless silences yet these are things invested in my mood with constancy and peace and fortitude that in my troubled season i can cry upon the wide composure of the sky and envy fields and wish that I might be as little daunted as a star or tree.

those hours are best when suddenly the voices of the world are still and in that quiet place is heard the voice of one small singing bird alone within his quiet tree when to one field that crowns a hill with but the sky for neighborhood the crowding counties of my brain give all their riches lake and plain cornland and fell and pillared wood when in a hill-top acre bare for the seed's use i am aware of all the beauty that an age of earth has taught my eyes to see when pride and generosity the constant heart and evil rage affection and desire and all the passions of experience are no more tabled in my mind learnings idolatry but find particularity of sense in daily fortitudes that fall from this or that companion or in an angry gossip's word when one man speaks for every one when music lives in one small bird when in a furrowed hill we see all beauty in epitome those hours are best for those belong to the lucidity of song the

that i may have a body fit to mate with the green fields and stars and streams in spate and clean as clover dew that i may have the courage to confute all fools with silence when they will dispute all fools who will deride that i may know all strict and sinewy art as that in man which is the counterpart lord of thy fiercest pride that somehow this beloved earth may wear a later grace for all the love i bear for some song that i sing that when i die this word may stand for me He had a heart to praise, an eye to see, and beauty was his king.

a shower of green gems on my apple-tree this first morning of may has fallen out of the night to be herald of holiday bright gems of green that fallen there seem fixed and glowing on the air until a flutter of blackbird wings shakes and makes the boughs alive and the gems are now no frozen things but apple-green buds to thrive on sap of my may garden how well the green september globes will tell also my pear-tree has its buds but they are silver yellow like autumn meadows when the floods are silver under willow and here shall long and shapely pears be gathered while the autumn wears and there are sixty daffodils beneath my wall and jealousy it is that kills this world when all the spring's behavior here is spent to make the world magnificent Reciprocity by John Drinkwater.

Read for LibriVox.org. i do not think that skies and meadows are moral or that the fixture of a star comes of a quiet spirit or that trees have wisdom in their windless silences yet these are things invested in my mood with constancy and peace and fortitude that in my troubled season i can cry upon the wide composure of the sky and envy fields and wish that I might be as little daunted as a star-whore tree.

those hours are best when suddenly the voices of the world are still and in that quiet place is heard the voice of one small singing bird alone within his quiet tree when to one field that crowns a hill with but the sky for neighborhood the crowding counties of my brain give all their riches lake and plain cornland and fell and pillared wood when in a hill-top acre bare for the seed's use i am aware of all the beauty that an age of earth has taught my eyes to see when pride and generosity the constant heart and evil rage affection and desire and all the passions of experience are no more tabled in my mind learnings idolatry but find particularity of sense in daily fortitudes that fall from this or that companion or in an angry gossip's word when one man speaks for every one when music lives in one small bird when in a furrowed hill we see all beauty in epitome Those hours are best for those belong To the lucidity of song.