The rich scene has grown fresh again and new As Spring and to the touch is not more cool Than it is warm to the gaze; and now I might As happy be as earth is beautiful, Were I some other or with earth could turn In alternation of violet and rose, Harebell and snowdrop, at their season due, And gorse that has no time not to be gay. But if this be not happiness,--who knows? Some day I shall think this a happy day, And this mood by the name of melancholy Shall no more blackened and obscured be. THE LONG SMALL ROOM THE long small room that showed willows in the west Narrowed up to the end the fireplace filled, Although not wide. I liked it. No one guessed What need or accident made them so build. Only the moon, the mouse and the sparrow peeped In from the ivy round the casement thick. Of all they saw and heard there they shall keep The tale for the old ivy and older brick. When I look back I am like moon, sparrow and mouse That witnessed what they could never understand Or alter or prevent in the dark house. One thing remains the same--this my right hand Crawling crab-like over the clean white page, Resting awhile each morning on the pillow, Then once more starting to crawl on towards age. The hundred last leaves stream upon the willow. LIBERTY THE last light has gone out of the world, except This moonlight lying on the grass like frost Beyond the brink of the tall elm's shadow It is as if everything else had slept Many an age, unforgotten and lost The men that were, the things done, long ago, All I have thought; and but the moon and I Live yet and here stand idle over the grave Where all is buried. Both have liberty To dream what we could do if we were free To do some thing we had desired long, The moon and I. There's none less free than who Does nothing and has nothing else to do, Being free only for what is not to his mind, And nothing is to his mind. If every hour Like this one passing that I have spent among The wiser others when I have forgot To wonder whether I was free or not, Were piled before me, and not lost behind, And I could take and carry them away I should be rich; or if I had the power To wipe out every one and not again Regret, I should be rich to be so poor. And yet I still am half in love with pain, With what is imperfect, with both tears and mirth, With things that have an end, with life and earth, And this moon that leaves me dark within the door. NOVEMBER NOVEMBER'S days are thirty: November's earth is dirty, Those thirty days, from first to last; And the prettiest things on ground are the paths With morning and evening hobnails dinted, With foot and wing-tip overprinted Or separately charactered, Of little beast and little bird. The fields are mashed by sheep, the roads Make the worst going, the best the woods Where dead leaves upward and downward scatter. Few care for the mixture of earth and water, Twig, leaf, flint, thorn, Straw, feather, all that men scorn, Pounded up and sodden by flood, Condemned as mud.