Summer's pleasures they are gone like to visions every one, And the cloudy days of autumn and of winter cometh on. I tried to call them back, but unbidden they are gone Far away from heart and eye and forever far away. Dear heart, and can it be that such raptures meet decay? I thought them all eternal when by Langley Bush I lay, I thought them joys eternal when I used to shout and play On its bank at "clink and bandy," "chock" and "taw" and "ducking stone," Where silence sitteth now on the wild heath as her own Like a ruin of the past all alone. When I used to lie and sing by old Eastwell's boiling spring, When I used to tie the willow boughs together for a swing, And fish with crooked pins and thread and never catch a thing, With heart just like a feather, now as heavy as a stone; When beneath old Lea Close oak I the bottom branches broke To make our harvest cart like so many working folk, And then to cut a straw at the brook to have a soak. O I never dreamed of parting or that trouble had a sting, Or that pleasures like a flock of birds would ever take to wing, Leaving nothing but a little naked spring. When jumping time away on old Crossberry Way, And eating awes like sugarplums ere they had lost the may, And skipping like a leveret before the peep of day On the roly poly up and downs of pleasant Swordy Well, When in Round Oak's narrow lane as the south got black again We sought the hollow ash that was shelter from the rain, With our pockets full of peas we had stolen from the grain; How delicious was the dinner time on such a showery day! O words are poor receipts for what time hath stole away, The ancient pulpit trees and the play. When for school oer Little Field with its brook and wooden brig, Where I swaggered like a man though I was not half so big, While I held my little plough though twas but a willow twig, And drove my team along made of nothing but a name, "Gee hep" and "hoit" and "woi"--O I never call to mind These pleasant names of places but I leave a sigh behind, While I see little mouldiwarps hang sweeing to the wind On the only aged willow that in all the field remains, And nature hides her face while they're sweeing in their chains And in a silent murmuring complains. Here was commons for their hills, where they seek for freedom still, Though every common's gone and though traps are set to kill The little homeless miners--O it turns my bosom chill When I think of old Sneap Green, Puddock's Nook and Hilly Snow, Where bramble bushes grew and the daisy gemmed in dew And the hills of silken grass like to cushions to the view, Where we threw the pismire crumbs when we'd nothing else to do, All levelled like a desert by the never weary plough, All banished like the sun where that cloud is passing now And settled here for ever on its brow.