Hermione and other poems [electronic text]

THE LIFE NATURAL

OVERHEAD the leaf-song, on the upland slope; Over that the azure, clean from base to cope; Belle the mare beside me, drowsy from her lope.

Goldy-green the wheat-field, like a fluted wall In the pleasant wind, with waves that rise and fall, "Moving all together," if it "move at all."

Shakspere in my pocket, lest I feel alone, Lest the brooding landscape take a sombre tone; Good to have a poet to fall back upon!

But the vivid beauty makes the book absurd:

What beside the real world is the written word? Keep the page till winter, when no thrush is heard!

Why read Hamlet here?—what's Hecuba to me? Let me read the grain-field; let me read the tree; Let me read mine own heart, deep as I can see.