Often had I gone this way before: But now it seemed I never could be And never had been anywhere else; ‘Twas home; one nationality We had, I and the birds that sang, One memory. They welcomed me. I had come back That eve somehow from somewhere far: The April mist, the chill, the calm, Meant the same thing familiar And pleasant to us, and strange too, Yet with no bar. The thrush on the oaktop in the lane Sang his last song, or last but one; And as he ended, on the elm Another had but just...

Men heard this roar of parleying starlings, saw, A thousand years ago even as now, Black rooks with white gulls following the plough So that the first are last until the caw Commands that last are first again, - a law Which was of old when one, like me, dreamed how A thousand years might dust lie on his brow Yet thus would birds do between hedge and shaw. Time swims before me, making as a day A thousand years, while the broad ploughland oak Roars mill-like and men strike and bear the...

Today I want the sky, The tops of the high hills, Above the last man’s house, His hedges, and his cows, Where, if I will, I look Down even on sheep and rook, And of all things that move See buzzards only above: - Past all trees, past furze And thorn, where naught deters The desire of the eye For sky, nothing but sky. I sicken of the woods And all the multitudes Of hedge trees. They are no more Than weeds upon this floor Of the river of air Leagues deep, leagues wide, where I am...