To walk along in the cool breath of dawn, Through dusk mysterious with faint song of birds.... Out of the valleys, mist was not yet gone,— Like sleeping rivers; it were hard for words To say that quiet wonder, and that sleep, And I alone, walking along the steep, To see and love it, like the God who made!... And I would draw the sea—when I was young I lived by sea. Its long slow cannonade Sullen against the cliffs, as the waves swung, I heard now, and the hollow guttural roar Of desolate shingle muttering down the shore.... And the long swift waves unfurled in smother of white, Snow, streaked with green, and sea-gulls shining high,— And their keen wings,—I minded how, in flight, They made a whimpering sound; and the clean sky, Swept blue by winds—O what would I have given To change this London pall for that sweet heaven! And I kept thinking of a Devon village That snuggled in a sea-side deep ravine, With the tall trees above, and the red tillage, And little houses smothered soft in green, And the fishers talking, biding for the tides, And mackerel boats all beached upon their sides. And it was pleasure edged with lightning pain To draw these things again in colored chalk, And I would sometimes think they lived again, And I would think “O God, if I could walk, It’s little while I’d linger in this street Giving my heart to bitterly wounding feet....” And shame would gnaw me that I had to do it. O there were moments when I could have cried To draw the thing I loved—and yet, I drew it; But how I longed to say I hadn’t lied, That I had been and seen it, that I wanted To go again, that through my dreams it haunted, That it was lovely here, but lovelier far Under its own sky, sweet as God had made. It hurt me keenly that I had to mar With gritty chalk, and smutchy light and shade, On grimy pavings, in a public square, What shone so purely yonder in soft air! And yet I drew—year after year I drew; Until the pictures, that I once so loved, Though better drawn, seemed not of things I knew, But dreamed perhaps; my heart no longer moved; And it no longer mattered if the rain Wiped out what I had drawn with so much pain. I only care to find the best-paid places, To get there first and get my pictures done, And then sit back and hate the pallid faces, And shut my eyes to warm them, if there’s sun, And get the pennies saved for harder times,— Winter in London is no joke, by crimes. It’s hellish cold. Your hands turn blue at drawing. You’re cramped; and frost goes cutting to your bones. O you would pray to God for sun and thawing If you had sat and dithered on these stones, And wanted shoes and not known how to get them, With these few clothes and winter rains to wet them.