The Sweetness Of England

And when, at last

Escaped,-so many a green slope built on slope

Betwixt me and the enemy's house behind,

I dared to rest, or wander,-like a rest

Made sweeter for the step upon the grass,-

And view the ground's most gentle dimplement,

(As if God's finger touched but did not press

In making England!) such an up and down

Of verdure,-nothing too much up or down,

A ripple of land; such little hills, the sky

Can stoop to tenderly and the wheatfields climb;

Such nooks of valleys, lined with orchises,

Fed full of noises by invisible streams;

And open pastures, where you scarcely tell

White daisies from white dew,-at intervals

The mythic oaks and elm-trees standing out

Self-poised upon their prodigy of shade,-

I thought my father's land was worthy too

Of being my Shakspeare's.

Very oft alone,

Unlicensed; not unfrequently with leave

To walk the third with Romney and his friend

The rising painter, Vincent Carrington,

Whom men judge hardly, as bee-bonneted,

Because he holds that, paint a body well,

You paint a soul by implication, like

The grand first Master. Pleasant walks! for if

He said . . 'When I was last in Italy' . .

It sounded as an instrument that's played

Too far off for the tune-and yet it's fine

To listen.

Often we walked only two,

If cousin Romney pleased to walk with me.

We read, or talked, or quarrelled, as it chanced;

We were not lovers, nor even friends well-matched-

Say rather, scholars upon different tracks,

And thinkers disagreed; he, overfull

Of what is, and I, haply, overbold

For what might be.

But then the thrushes sang,

And shook my pulses and the elms' new leaves,-

And then I turned, and held my finger up,

And bade him mark that, howsoe'er the world

Went ill, as he related, certainly

The thrushes still sang in it.-At which word

His brow would soften,-and he bore with me

In melancholy patience, not unkind,

While, breaking into voluble ecstasy,

I flattered all the beauteous country round,

As poets use . . .the skies, the clouds, the fields,

The happy violets hiding from the roads

The primroses run down to, carrying gold,-

The tangled hedgerows, where the cows push out

Impatient horns and tolerant churning mouths

'Twixt dripping ash-boughs,-hedgerows all alive

With birds and gnats and large white butterflies

Which look as if the May-flower had sought life

And palpitated forth upon the wind,-

Hills, vales, woods, netted in a silver mist,

Farms, granges, doubled up among the hills,

And cattle grazing in the watered vales,

And cottage-chimneys smoking from the woods,

And cottage-gardens smelling everywhere,

Confused with smell of orchards. 'See,' I said,

'And see! is God not with us on the earth?

This extract from a much larger work is taken from the anthology "The Open Road" by E. V. Lucas [Methuen 1931] page 53, 54