Poetry Archives

No wind there is that either pipes or moans;
  The fields are cold and still; the sky
    Is covered with a blue-gray sheet
    Of motionless cloud; and at my feet
  The river, curling softly by,
Whispers and dimples round its quiet gray stones.

Along the chill green slope that dips and heaves
  The road runs rough and silent, lined
    With plum-trees, misty and blue-gray,
    And poplars pallid as the day,
  In masses spectral, undefined,
Pale greenish stems half hid in dry gray leaves.

And on beside the river’s sober edge
  A long fresh field lies black. Beyond,
    Low thickets gray and reddish stand,
    Stroked white with birch; and near at hand,
  Over a little steel-smooth pond,
Hang multitudes of thin and withering sedge.

Across a waste and solitary rise
  A ploughman urges his dull team,
    A stooped gray figure with prone brow
    That plunges bending to the plough
  With strong, uneven steps. The stream
Rings and re-echoes with his furious cries.

Sometimes the lowing of a cow, long-drawn,
  Comes from far off; and crows in strings
    Pass on the upper silences.
    A flock of small gray goldfinches,
  Flown down with silvery twitterings,
Rustle among the birch-cones and are gone.

This day the season seems like one that heeds,
  With fixed ear and lifted hand,
    All moods that yet are known on earth,
    All motions that have faintest birth,
  If haply she may understand
The utmost inward sense of all her deeds.