William Canton

With rakish eye and plenished crop,
Oblivious of the farmer's gun,
Upon the naked ash-tree top
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In the heart of the white summer mist lay a green little piece of the world;
And the tops of the beeches were lost in the mist, and the
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Abba, in Thine eternal years
Bethink Thee of our fleeting day;
We are but clay;
Bear with our foolish joys, our foolish tears,
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Oh, had I but a plot of earth, on plain or vale or hill,
With running water babbling through, in torrent, spring, or rill,

I'd plant a tree, an o ...
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I WRITE. He sits beside my chair,
And scribbles, too, in hushed delight;
He dips his pen in charméd air:
What is it he pretends to write?
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In the orchard blithely waking,
Through the blossom, loud and clear,
Pipes the goldfinch, “Day is breaking;
Waken, Babsie; May is here!
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In the April sun at baby-house she plays.
Her rooms are traced with stones and bits of bricks;
For warmth she lays a hearth with little sticks,
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When the herds were watching
In the midnight chill,
Came a spotless lambkin
From the heavenly hill.
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Far down upon the plain the large round moon
Sank red in jungle mist; but on the heights
The cold clear darkness burned with restless stars:
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Did you ever read or hear
How the Aid—(God bless the Aid!
More earnest prayer than that was never prayed.)
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Last June—how slight a thing to tell!—
One straggling leaf beneath the limes
Against the sunset rose and fell,
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He walked in glory on the hills;
We dalesmen envied from afar
The heights and rose-lit pinnacles
Which placed him nigh the evening star.
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In praise of little children I will say
God first made man, then found a better way
For woman, but his third way was the best.
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Enormous sea; immeasurable night!
The shoreless waters, heaving spectral-white,
Vibrate with showers and chains of golden sparks.
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Oh, what has been born in the night
To bask in this blithe summer morn?
She peers, in a dream of delight,
For something new-made or new-born.
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He knows no home; he only knows
Hunger and cold and pain;
The four winds are his bedfellows;
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This grace vouchsase me for the rhymes I write.
If any last, nor perish quick and quite,
Lord, let them be
My little images, to stand for me
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O the merry bells of Chester, ancient Chester on the Dee!
On that glittering autumn morning, eighteen five,
Every Englishman was glad to be alive.
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