Market day
Market day
Original Text
Poems and The Spring of Joy, intro. Walter de la Mare (London: Jonathan Cape, 1928): 34-5.
1Who'll walk the fields with us to town,
2In an old coat and a faded gown?
3We take our roots and country sweets
4Where high walls shade the steep old streets,
5And golden bells and silver chimes
6Ring up and down the sleepy times.
7The morning mountains smoke like fires;
8The sun spreads out his shining wires;
9The mower in the half-mown leasur
10Sips his tea and takes his pleasure.
11Along the lanes slow waggons amble;
12The sad-eyed calves awake and gamble;
13The foal that lay so sorrowful
14Is playing in the grasses cool.
15By slanting ways, in slanting sun,
16Through startled lapwings now we run
17Along the pale green hazel-path,
18Through April's lingering aftermath
20We stay to watch a nesting dipper.
21The rabbits eye us while we pass,
22Out of the sorrel-crimson grass;
23The blackbird sings, without a fear,
24Where honeysuckle horns blow clear --
25Cool ivory stained with true vermilion;
26And here, within a silk pavilion,
27Small caterpillars lie at ease.
28The endless shadows of the trees
29Are painted purple and cobalt;
31Each one aware of you and me,
32And full of conscious dignity.
33Our shoes are golden as we pass
34With pollen from the pansied grass.
35Beneath an elder -- set anew
36With large clean plates to catch the dew --
37On fine white cheese and bread we dine:
38The clear brook-water tastes like wine.
39If all folk lived with labour sweet
40Of their own busy hands and feet,
41Such marketing, it seems to me,
42Would make an end of poverty.
Notes
19] lady's smock: white cuckoo-flower. lady's slipper: orchid-like flower. Back to Line
30] rook-files: flocks of crows. Back to Line
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire
RPO Edition
2004