Читать книгу Poems, 1908-1919 - Drinkwater John - Страница 2

Those hours are best when suddenly

The voices of the world are still,

And in that quiet place is heard

The voice of one small singing bird,

Alone within his quiet tree;

When to one field that crowns a hill,

With but the sky for neighbourhood,

The crowding counties of my brain

Give all their riches, lake and plain,

Cornland and fell and pillared wood;

When in a hill-top acre, bare

For the seed’s use, I am aware

Of all the beauty that an age

Of earth has taught my eyes to see;

When Pride and Generosity

The Constant Heart and Evil Rage,

Affection and Desire, and all

The passions of experience

Are no more tabled in my mind,

Learning’s idolatry, but find

Particularity of sense

In daily fortitudes that fall

From this or that companion,

Or in an angry gossip’s word;

When one man speaks for Every One,

When Music lives in one small bird,

When in a furrowed hill we see

All beauty in epitome —

Those hours are best; for those belong

To the lucidity of song.