The Midlands

Black in the summer night my Cotswold hillAslant my window sleeps, beneath a skyDeep as the bedded violets that fillMarch woods with dusky passion. As I lieAbed between cool walls I watch the hostOf the slow stars lit over Gloucester plain,And drowsily the habit of these mostBeloved 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 mistWreathed under limpid hills in moving light,Happy with many a yeoman melodist:I see the little roads of twinkling whiteBusy with fieldward teams and market gearOf rosy men, cloth-gaitered, who can tellThe 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 rowsOf ripe and summer-breathing clover-flower,I see the lissom husbandman who knowsDeep in his heart the beauty of his power,As, lithely pitched, the full-heaped fork bids onThe harvest home. I hear the rickyard fillWith 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 plannedBy men who somehow moved in comely thought,Who, with a simple shippon to their hand,As men upon some godlike business wrought;I see the little cottages that keepTheir beauty still where since PlantagenetHave 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 sunBroke 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 wingBrushes the night, and all again is still,And, from this land of worship that I sing,I turn to sleep, content that from my siresI draw the blood of England’s midmost shires.