Eggs scribbled over with strange writing, signs,
  Prophecies, and their meaning (for you see
The yolk within) is life, ’neath yonder bines
  Lie among sedges; on a hawthorn tree
The slender-lord and master perched hard by,
Scolds at all comers if they step too nigh.

And our small river makes encompassment
  Of half the mead and holm:  yon lime-trees grow
All heeling over to it, diligent
  To cast green doubles of themselves below,
But shafts of sunshine reach its shallow floor
And warm the yellow sand it ripples o’er.

Ripples and ripples to a pool it made
Turning.  The cows are there, one creamy white—­
She should be painted with no touch of shade
If any list to limn her—­she the light
Above, about her, treads out circles wide,
And sparkling water flashes from her side.

The clouds have all retired to so great height
  As earth could have no dealing with them more,
As they were lost, for all her drawing and might,
  And must be left behind; but down the shore
Lie lovelier clouds in ranks of lace-work frail,
Wild parsley with a myriad florets pale,

Another milky-way, more intricate
  And multitudinous, with every star
Perfect.  Long changeful sunbeams undulate
  Amid the stems where sparklike creatures are
That hover and hum for gladness, then the last
Tree rears her graceful head, the shade is passed.

And idle fish in warm wellbeing lie
  Each with his shadow under, while at ease
As clouds that keep their shape the darting fry
  Turn and are gone in company; o’er these
Strangers to them, strangers to us, from holes
Scooped in the bank peer out shy water-voles.

Here, take for life and fly with innocent feet
  The brown-eyed fawns, from moving shadows clear;
There, down the lane with multitudinous bleat
  Plaining on shepherd lads a flock draws near;
A mild lamenting fills the morning air,
‘Why to yon upland fold must we needs fare?’

These might be fabulous creatures every one,
  And this their world might be some other sphere
We had but heard of, for all said or done
  To know of them,—­of what this many a year
They may have thought of man, or of his sway,
Or even if they have a God and pray,

The sweetest river bank can never more
  Home to its source tempt back the lapsed stream,
Nor memory reach the ante-natal shore,
  Nor one awake behold a sleeper’s dream,
Not easier ’t were that unbridged chasm to walk,
And share the strange lore of their wordless talk.

Like to a poet voice, remote from ken,
  That unregarded sings and undesired,
Like to a star unnamed by lips of men,
  That faints at dawn in saffron light retired,
Like to an echo in some desert deep
From age to age unwakened from its sleep—­

So falls unmarked that other world’s great song,
  And lapsing wastes without interpreter. 
Slave world! not man’s to raise, yet man’s to wrong,
  He cannot to a loftier place prefer,
But he can,—­all its earlier rights forgot,
Reign reckless if its nations rue their lot.