And the houses, you say, are of jasper cut, And the gates are gaudy wi’ gold and gem; But there’s times I could wish as the gates was shut— The gates o’ the New Jerusalem.
For I come from a country that’s over-built Wi’ streets that stifle, and walls that hem, And the gorse on a common’s worth all the gilt And the gold of your New Jerusalem.
And I hope that they’ll bring me, in Paradise, To green lanes leafy wi’ bough and stem— To a country place in the land o’ the skies, And not to the New Jerusalem.
MOWERS, weary and brown, and blithe, What is the word methinks ye know, Endless over-word that the Scythe Sings to the blades of the grass below? Scythes that swing in the grass and clover, Something, still, they say as they pass; What is the word that, over and over, Sings the Scythe to the flowers and grass?
_Hush_, _ah hush_, the Scythes are saying, _Hush_, _and heed not_, _and fall asleep_; _Hush_, they say to the grasses swaying, _Hush_, they sing to the clover deep! _Hush_—’tis the lullaby Time is singing— _Hush_, _and heed not_, _for all things pass_, _Hush_, _ah hush_! and the Scythes are swinging Over the clover, over the grass!
YE wanderers that were my sires, Who read men’s fortunes in the hand, Who voyaged with your smithy fires From waste to waste across the land, Why did you leave for garth and town Your life by heath and river’s brink, Why lay your gipsy freedom down And doom your child to Pen and Ink?
You wearied of the wild-wood meal That crowned, or failed to crown, the day; Too honest or too tame to steal You broke into the beaten way; Plied loom or awl like other men, And learned to love the guineas’ chink— Oh, recreant sires, who doomed me then To earn so few—with Pen and Ink!
Where it hath fallen the tree must lie. ’Tis over late for _me_ to roam, Yet the caged bird who hears the cry Of his wild fellows fleeting home, May feel no sharper pang than mine, Who seem to hear, whene’er I think, Spate in the stream, and wind in pine, Call me to quit dull Pen and Ink.
For then the spirit wandering, That slept within the blood, awakes; For then the summer and the spring I fain would meet by streams and lakes; But ah, my Birthright long is sold, But custom chains me, link on link, And I must get me, as of old, Back to my tools, to Pen and Ink.