BETWEEN a sunny bank and the sun The farmhouse smiles On the riverside plat: No other one So pleasant to look at And remember, for many miles, So velvet-hushed and cool under the warm tiles. Not far from the road it lies, yet caught Far out of reach Of the road's dust And the dusty thought Of passers-by, though each Stops, and turns, and must Look down at it like a wasp at the muslined peach. But another house stood there long before: And as if above graves Still the turf heaves Above its stones: Dark hangs the sycamore, Shadowing kennel and bones And the black dog that shakes his chain and moans. And when he barks, over the river Flashing fast, Dark echoes reply, And the hollow past Half yields the dead that never More than half hidden lie: And out they creep and back again for ever. THE MILL-WATER ONLY the sound remains Of the old mill; Gone is the wheel; On the prone roof and walls the nettle reigns. Water that toils no more Dangles white locks And, falling, mocks The music of the mill-wheel's busy roar. Pretty to see, by day Its sound is naught Compared with thought And talk and noise of labour and of play. Night makes the difference. In calm moonlight, Gloom infinite, The sound comes surging in upon the sense: Solitude, company,-- When it is night,-- Grief or delight By it must haunted or concluded be. Often the silentness Has but this one Companion; Wherever one creeps in the other is: Sometimes a thought is drowned By it, sometimes Out of it climbs; All thoughts begin or end upon this sound, Only the idle foam Of water falling Changelessly calling, Where once men had a work-place and a home. A DREAM OVER known fields with an old friend in dream I walked, but came sudden to a strange stream. Its dark waters were bursting out most bright From a great mountain's heart into the light. They ran a short course under the sun, then back Into a pit they plunged, once more as black As at their birth; and I stood thinking there How white, had the day shone on them, they were, Heaving and coiling. So by the roar and hiss And by the mighty motion of the abyss I was bemused, that I forgot my friend And neither saw nor sought him till the end, When I awoke from waters unto men Saying: "I shall be here some day again." SEDGE-WARBLERS THIS beauty made me dream there was a time Long past and irrecoverable, a clime Where any brook so radiant racing clear Through buttercup and kingcup bright as brass But gentle, nourishing the meadow grass That leans and scurries in the wind, would bear Another beauty, divine and feminine, Child to the sun, a nymph whose soul unstained Could love all day, and never hate or tire, A lover of mortal or immortal kin.