Classic Poem

I LOVE each inch of English earth;
I love each stone upon the way—
Whether in Winter's sullen dearth,
When the soil is trodden into clay—
In Autumn ripeness, or the mirth
Of a Summer's day.

Something peculiar to our land
Is hid in even the greyest sky,
When stiff and stark the tall trees stand
And the wind is high.

But this one season of our year
Is so peculiarly an English thing,
When the woolly catkins first appear,
And yellow burgeoning
Upon the little coppice here—
This native Spring

Which comes to us so suddenly,
Blown over the hills from the fruitful South;
Full of the laughter of the laughing sea
She comes with singing mouth.

The cool, sweet Wiltshire meadows lie
With buttercups from end to end;
In secret woods are small blooms, shy
Bluebells the good gods send.
There is no cloud that wanders by
But is my friend.

And now the gorse is gold again;
The violet hides beneath the leaves;
And quickened by thin April rain
The debonair young sapling weaves
His coat of lightest green; again
Birds chirp at the eaves.

Each hidden brook and waterfall,
Each tiny daisy in the sun
Calls to my heart—the hedgerows all
So full of twigs, they call, each one;
And with insistent voices call
The roads where the wild flowers run.

O set with grass and the English hedge
Are the long, white roads which wind and wind—
Roads which reach to the world's edge,
Where the world is left behind.