WORDS

by: Edward Thomas

UT of us all

That make rhymes,

Will you choose

Sometimes--

As the winds use

A crack in the wall

Or a drain,

Their joy or their pain

To whistle through--

Choose me,

You English words?

 

I know you:

You are light as dreams,

Tough as oak,

Precious as gold,

As poppies and corn,

Or an old cloak;

Sweet as our birds

to the ear,

As the burnet rose

 

In the heat

Of Midsummer:

Strange as the races

Of dead and unborn:

Strange and sweet

Equally,

And familiar,

To the eye,

As the dearest faces

That a man knows,

And as lost homes are:

But though older far

Than oldest yew,--

As our hills are, old,--

Worn new

Again and again:

Young as our streams

After rain:

And as dear

As the earth which you prove

That we love.

 

Make me content

With some sweetness

From Wales,

Whose nightingales

Have no wings,--

From Wiltshire and Kent

And Herefordshire,

And the villages there,--

From the names, and the things

No less.

Let me sometimes dance

With you,

Or climb,

Or stand perchance

In ecstasy,

Fixed and free

In a rhyme,

As poets do.

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