SONNET IN A SPRING GROVE
HERE the white-ray’d anemone is born,
Wood-sorrel, and the varnished buttercup,
And primrose in its purpled green swathed up,
Pallid and sweet round every budding thorn:
Grey ash and beech with rusty leaves outworn.
Here, too, the darting linnet has her nest,
In the blue-lustred holly, never shorn;
Whose partner cheers the little brooding breast,
Piping from some near bough. O simple song!
O cistern deep of that harmonious rillet;
And these fair juicy stems that climb and throng
The vernal world, and unexhausted seas
Of flowing life! and soul, that asks to fill it
Each of them all – and more, and more than these.