Green Glass Beads Read online

  Where I was used to swing,

  And thought the air must rush as fresh

  To swallows on the wing;

  My spirit flew in feathers then,

  That is so heavy now,

  And summer pools could hardly cool

  The fever on my brow!

  I remember, I remember

  The fir-trees dark and high;

  I used to think their slender tops

  Were close against the sky:

  It was a childish ignorance,

  But now ’tis little joy

  To know I’m farther off from heav’n

  Than when I was a boy.

  Thomas Hood

  Cottage

  When I live in a Cottage

  I shall keep in my Cottage

  Two different Dogs

  Three creamy Cows

  Four giddy Goats

  Five pewter Pots

  Six silver Spoons

  Seven busy Beehives

  Eight ancient Appletrees

  Nine red Rosebushes

  Ten teeming Teapots

  Eleven chirping Chickens

  Twelve cosy Cats with their kittenish Kittens

  and

  One blessèd Baby in a Basket.

  That’s what I’ll have when I live in my Cottage.

  Eleanor Farjeon

  The Lake Isle of Innisfree

  I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,

  And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:

  Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,

  And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

  And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,

  Dropping from the veils of the morningto where the cricket sings;

  There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,

  And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

  I will arise and go now, for always night and day

  I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;

  While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,

  I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

  W. B. Yeats

  The Way through the Woods

  They shut the road through the woods

  Seventy years ago.

  Weather and rain have undone it again,

  And now you would never know

  There was once a road through the woods

  Before they planted the trees.

  It is underneath the coppice and heath,

  And the thin anemones.

  Only the keeper sees

  That, where the ring-dove broods,

  And the badgers roll at ease,

  There was once a road through the woods.

  Yet, if you enter the woods

  Of a summer evening late,

  When the night-air cools on the trout-ringed pools

  Where the otter whistles his mate,

  (They fear not men in the woods,

  Because they see so few.)

  You will hear the beat of a horse’s feet,

  And the swish of a skirt in the dew,

  Steadily cantering through

  The misty solitudes,

  As though they perfectly knew

  The old lost road through the woods . . .

  But there is no road through the woods.

  Rudyard Kipling

  Adlestrop

  Yes. I remember Adlestrop –

  The name, because one afternoon

  Of heat the express-train drew up there

  Unwontedly. It was late June.

  The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.

  No one left and no one came

  On the bare platform. What I saw

  Was Adlestrop – only the name

  And willows, willow-herb, and grass,

  And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,

  No whit less still and lonely fair

  Than the high cloudlets in the sky.

  And for that minute a blackbird sang

  Close by, and round him, mistier,

  Farther and farther, all the birds

  Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.

  Edward Thomas

  The Counties

  Saturday 7 August 2010

  (It was announced that county names could disappear by 2016 after Royal Mail unveiled plans to delete them from its database)

  But I want to write to an Essex girl,

  greeting her warmly.

  But I want to write to a Shropshire lad,

  brave boy, home from the army,

  and I want to write to the Lincolnshire Poacher

  to hear of his hare

  and to an aunt in Bedfordshire

  who makes a wooden hill of her stair.

  But I want to post a rose to a Lancashire lass,

  red, I’ll pick it,

  and I want to write to a Middlesex mate

  for tickets for cricket.

  But I want to write to the Ayrshire cheesemaker

  and his good cow

  and it is my duty to write to the Queen at Berkshire

  in praise of Slough.

  But I want to write to the National Poet of Wales at Ceredigion

  in celebration

  and I want to write to the Dorset Giant

  in admiration

  and I want to write to a widow in Rutland

  in commiseration

  and to the Inland Revenue in Yorkshire

  in desperation.

  But I want to write to my uncle in Clackmannanshire

  in his kilt

  and to my scrumptious cousin in Somerset

  with her cidery lilt.

  But I want to write to two ladies in Denbighshire,

  near Llangollen

  and I want to write to a laddie in Lanarkshire,

  Dear Lachlan . . .

  But I want to write to the Cheshire Cat,

  returning its smile.

  But I want to write the names of the Counties down

  for my own child

  and may they never be lost to her . . .

  all the birds of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire . . .

  Carol Ann Duffy

  RAINBOWS, MOONS AND STARS

  Spell to Bring a Smile

  Come down Rainbow

  Rainbow come down

  I have a space for you

  in my small face

  If my face is too small for you

  take a space in my chest

  If my chest is too small for you

  take a space in my belly

  If my belly is too small for you

  then take every part of me

  Come down Rainbow

  Rainbow come down

  You can eat me from head to toe

  John Agard

  My Heart Leaps Up

  My heart leaps up when I behold

  A rainbow in the sky:

  So was it when my life began;

  So is it now I am a man;

  So be it when I shall grow old,

  Or let me die!

  The Child is father of the Man;

  And I could wish my days to be

  Bound each to each by natural piety.

  William Wordsworth

  Above the Dock

  Above the quiet dock in midnight,

  Tangled in the tall mast’s corded height,

  Hangs the moon. What seemed so far away

  is but a child’s balloon, forgotten after play.

  T. E. Hulme

  Lemon Moon

  On a hot and thirsty summer night,

  The moon’s a wedge of lemon light

  Sitting low among the trees,

  Close enough for you to squeeze

  And make a moonade, icy-sweet,

  To cool your summer-dusty heat.

  Beverly McLoughland

  The Moon Landing

  July 1969

  To celebrate

  the first moonwalk