COMFORT
OF THE FIELDS
What would’st
thou have for easement after grief,
When the rude world hath used
thee with despite,
And care sits at thine elbow
day and night,
Filching thy pleasures like a subtle thief?
To me, when life besets me in such wise,
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’Tis sweetest to break forth, to drop the chain,
And grasp the freedom of this
pleasant earth,
To roam in idleness and sober
mirth,
Through summer airs and summer lands, and drain
The comfort of wide fields unto tired eyes.
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By hills
and waters, farms and solitudes,
To wander by the day with wilful
feet;
Through fielded valleys wide
with yellowing wheat;
Along gray roads that run between deep woods,
Murmurous and cool; through hallowed slopes of pine,
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Where the long daylight dreams,
unpierced, unstirred,
And only the rich-throated thrush
is heard;
By lonely forest brooks that froth and shine
In bouldered crannies buried
in the hills;
By broken beeches tangled with wild vine,
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And log-strewn rivers murmurous
with mills.
In upland
pastures, sown with gold, and sweet
With the keen perfume of the
ripening grass,
Where wings of birds and filmy
shadows pass,
Spread thick as stars with shining marguerite;
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To haunt old fences overgrown with brier,
Muffled in vines, and hawthorns,
and wild cherries,
Rank poisonous ivies, red-bunched
elderberries,
And pied blossoms to the heart’s desire,
Gray mullein towering into yellow
bloom,
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Pink-tasseled milkweed, breathing
dense perfume,
And swarthy vervain, tipped with violet fire.
To hear at
eve the bleating of far flocks,
The mud-hen’s whistle from the
marsh at morn;
To skirt with deafened ears
and brain o’erborne
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Some foam-filled rapid charging down its rocks
With iron roar of waters; far away
Across wide-reeded meres, pensive
with noon,
To hear the querulous outcry
of the loon;
To lie among deep rocks, and watch all day
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On liquid heights the snowy
clouds melt by;
Or hear from wood-capped mountain-brows the jay
Pierce the bright morning with
his jibing cry.
To feast
on summer sounds; the jolted wains,
The thrasher humming from the
farm near by,
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The prattling cricket’s intermittent
cry,
The locust’s rattle from the sultry lanes;
Or in the shadow of some oaken spray,
To watch, as through a mist
of light and dreams,
The far-off hay-fields, where
the dusty teams
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Drive round and round the lessening squares of hay,
And hear upon the wind, now
loud, now low,
With drowsy cadence half a summer’s day,
The clatter of the reapers come
and go.
Far violet
hills, horizons filmed with showers,
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The murmur of cool streams,
the forest’s gloom,
The voices of the breathing
grass, the hum
Of ancient gardens overbanked with flowers:
Thus, with a smile as golden as the dawn,
And cool fair fingers radiantly
divine,
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The mighty mother brings us
in her hand,
For all tired eyes and foreheads pinched and wan,
Her restful cup, her beaker of bright wine:
Drink, and be filled, and ye
shall understand!
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