Summer pleasures they are gone like to visions every one And the cloudy days of autumn and of winter cometh on I tried to call them back but unbidden they are gone Far away from heart and eye and for ever far away Dear heart and can it be that such raptures meet decay I thought them all eternal when by Langley Bush I lay I thought them joys eternal when I used to shout and play On its bank at `clink and bandy` `chock` and `taw` and ducking stone Where silence sitteth now on the wild heath as her own Like a ruin of the past all alone When I used to lie and sing by old eastwells boiling spring When I used to tie the willow boughs together for a `swing` And fish with crooked pins and thread and never catch a thing With heart just like a feather- now as heavy as a stone When beneath old lea close oak I the bottom branches broke To make our harvest cart like so many working folk And then to cut a straw at the brook to have a soak O I never dreamed of parting or that trouble had a sting Or that pleasures like a flock of birds would ever take to wing Leaving nothing but a little naked spring When jumping time away on old cross berry way And eating awes like sugar plumbs ere they had lost the may And skipping like a leveret before the peep of day On the rolly polly up and downs of pleasant swordy well When in round oaks narrow lane as the south got black again We sought the hollow ash that was shelter from the rain With our pockets full of peas we had stolen from the grain How delicious was the dinner time on such a showry day O words are poor receipts for what time hath stole away The ancient pulpit trees and the play When for school oer `little field` with its brook and wooden brig Where I swaggered like a man though I was not half so big While I held my little plough though twas but a willow twig And drove my team along made of nothing but a name `Gee hep` and `hoit` and `woi`- O I never call to mind These pleasant names of places but I leave a sigh behind While I see the little mouldywharps hang sweeing to the wind On the only aged willow that in all the field remains And nature hides her face where theyre sweeing in their chains And in a silent murmuring complains Here was commons for the hills where they seek for freedom still Though every commons gone and though traps are set to kill The little homeless miners- O it turns my bosom chill When I think of old `sneap green` puddocks nook and hilly snow Where bramble bushes grew and the daisy gemmed in dew And the hills of silken grass like to cushions to the view When we threw the pissmire crumbs when we`s nothing else to do All leveled like a desert by the never weary plough All vanished like the sun where that cloud is passing now All settled here for ever on its brow I never thought that joys would run away from boys Or that boys would change their minds and forsake such summer joys But alack I never dreamed that the world had other toys To petrify first feelings like the fable into stone Till I found the pleasure past and a winter come at last Then the fields were sudden bare and the sky got overcast And boyhoods pleasing haunts like a blossom in the blast Was shrivelled to a withered weed and trampled down and done Till vanished was the morning spring and set that summer sun And winter fought her battle strife and won By Langley bush I roam but the bush hath left its hill On cowper green I stray tis a desert strange and chill And spreading lea close oak ere decay had penned its will To the axe of the spoiler and self interest fell a prey And cross berry way and old round oaks narrow lane With its hollow trees like pulpits I shall never see again Inclosure like a Buonaparte let not a thing remain It levelled every bush and tree and levelled every hill And hung the moles for traitors - though the brook is running still It runs a naked brook cold and chill O had I known as then joy had left the paths of men I had watched her night and day besure and never slept agen And when she turned to go O I`d caught her mantle then And wooed her like a lover by my lonely side to stay Aye knelt and worshipped on as love in beautys bower And clung upon her smiles as a bee upon her flower And gave her heart my poesys all cropt in a sunny hour As keepsakes and pledges to fade away But love never heeded to treasure up the may So it went the comon road with decay.SourceThe script ran 0.001 seconds.
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