Pillaring with flame this crumbling boundary, 85
      Whose loose blocks topple ’neath the plough-boy’s foot,
        Who, with each sense shut fast except the eye,
      Creeps close and scares the jay he hoped to shoot,
        The woodbine up the elm’s straight stem aspires,
        Coiling it, harmless, with autumnal fires; 90
    In the ivy’s paler blaze the martyr oak stands mute.

        Below, the Charles, a stripe of nether sky,
      Now hid by rounded apple-trees between,
        Whose gaps the misplaced sail sweeps bellying by,
      Now flickering golden through a woodland screen, 95
        Then spreading out, at his next turn beyond,
        A silver circle like an inland pond—­
    Slips seaward silently through marshes purple and green.

        Dear marshes! vain to him the gift of sight
      Who cannot in their various incomes share, 100
        From every season drawn, of shade and light,
      Who sees in them but levels brown and bare;
        Each change of storm or sunshine scatters free
        On them its largess of variety,
    For Nature with cheap means still works her wonders rare. 105

        In spring they lie one broad expanse of green,
      O’er which the light winds run with glimmering feet: 
        Here, yellower stripes track out the creek unseen,
      There, darker growths o’er hidden ditches meet;
        And purpler stains show where the blossoms crowd, 110
        As if the silent shadow of a cloud
    Hung there becalmed, with the next breath to fleet.

        All round, upon the river’s slippery edge,
      Witching to deeper calm the drowsy tide,
        Whispers and leans the breeze-entangling sedge; 115
      Through emerald glooms the lingering waters slide,
        Or, sometimes wavering, throw back the sun,
        And the stiff banks in eddies melt and run
    Of dimpling light, and with the current seem to glide.

        In summer ’t is a blithesome sight to see, 120
      As, step by step, with measured swing, they pass,
        The wide-ranked mowers wading to the knee,
      Their sharp scythes panting through the wiry grass;
        Then, stretched beneath a rick’s shade in a ring,
        Their nooning take, while one begins to sing 125
    A stave that droops and dies ’neath the close sky of brass.

        Meanwhile that devil-may-care, the bobolink. 
      Remembering duty, in mid-quaver stops
        Just ere he sweeps o’er rapture’s tremulous brink,
      And ’twixt the winrows most demurely drops, 130
        A decorous bird of business, who provides
        For his brown mate and fledglings six besides,
    And looks from right to left, a farmer ’mid his crops.