Classic Poem

To list the summer breeze
Sigh through the leafy trees,
As on the grass within their shade I lie,
In the full noontide free,
Is such a joy to me,
While through their branches shines the distant sky.

Methinks I always hear
Wild odes, to poets dear,
Swell through the tree-tops, as I muse below;
Whether by day or night,
Whether in dark or light,
Like organ echoes surging to and fro.

Sway! sway! as if they said
In green robes overhead,
" What music is so rich as that we give,
When breezes steal along,
Or when the winds are strong?
In converse with the elements we live.

" Cold, cold the earth below,
Cold, cold with wrong and woe:
Pride tramples weakness, glorying in its crime;
Worth warbles in the shade,
Neglected, lone, dismay'd,
And so we joy the firmament to climb.

" Our boughs the free birds love,
The thrush, the gentle dove,
The linnet chirping to the murmuring breeze;
And every bard true-born
Lingers at eve and morn,
To treasure up the teaching of the trees.

" We stand near halls of state,
And by the poor man's gate;
Our summer branches shade the village well;
And lovers breathe their vows
Under our spreading boughs,
When twilight lingers in the dusky dell.

" Where falling waters play
On the wide moorland grey,
Beside the thatch'd cot on the daisy lea,
By ocean's lonely shore,
Where rolling billows roar.
And in the city's circle, there are we.

" We give the approach of Spring,
Of Summer's reign we sing,
Discourse of Autumn brown and Winter drear;
True books are we which show
The seasons as they go,
For evermore the prophets of the year.

" The schoolboy loves us well,
As, lingering in the dell,
He climbs from limb to limb with shout and lay.
Young men and maidens fair
Under our boughs repair,
When labour rests, to talk the eve away.

" Beside her cottage door,
Upon the rushy moor,
The aged dame sits knitting in our shade;
What time the cuckoo's note
Does o'er the meadows float,
And swallows wheel along the grassy glade.

" The invalid comes here,
Rejoicing through a tear,
To mark the sky-lark o'er our green heads sing,
When sounds the pensive bell
Along the quiet dell,
And the lone shepherd watches by the spring.

" And here in secret prayer
The pilgrim doth repair:
At fading eve, when bright the glow-worms shine,
And we are rustling low,
His vespers from below
Rise o'er our heads and reach the ear Divine.

" We screen the old thatch'd mill,
Wave high upon the hill,
Roar in the storm, and murmur in the breeze;
Whether full-leaf'd or bare,
Our psalm is on the air,
The voice of God is heard among the trees. "

Sway! sway! And so 't will be,
Till love o'er land and sea
Shall reign, and discord from the earth be driven;
When swords and spears are spurn'd,
And into ploughshares turn'd,
And earth unblasted shall become a heaven.