---

Elizabeth Barrett Browning - The Sweetness Of England
Work rating: Medium

And when, at last
Escaped,-so many a green slope built on slope
Betwixt me and the enemy`s house behind,
I dared to rest, or wander,-like a rest
Made sweeter for the step upon the grass,-
And view the ground`s most gentle dimplement,
(As if God`s finger touched but did not press
In making England!) such an up and down
Of verdure,-nothing too much up or down,
A ripple of land; such little hills, the sky
Can stoop to tenderly and the wheatfields climb;
Such nooks of valleys, lined with orchises,
Fed full of noises by invisible streams;
And open pastures, where you scarcely tell
White daisies from white dew,-at intervals
The mythic oaks and elm-trees standing out
Self-poised upon their prodigy of shade,-
I thought my father`s land was worthy too
Of being my Shakspeare`s.
Very oft alone,
Unlicensed; not unfrequently with leave
To walk the third with Romney and his friend
The rising painter, Vincent Carrington,
Whom men judge hardly, as bee-bonneted,
Because he holds that, paint a body well,
You paint a soul by implication, like
The grand first Master. Pleasant walks! for if
He said . . `When I was last in Italy` . . 
It sounded as an instrument that`s played
Too far off for the tune-and yet it`s fine
To listen. 
Often we walked only two,
If cousin Romney pleased to walk with me.
We read, or talked, or quarrelled, as it chanced;
We were not lovers, nor even friends well-matched-
Say rather, scholars upon different tracks,
And thinkers disagreed; he, overfull
Of what is, and I, haply, overbold
For what might be.
But then the thrushes sang,
And shook my pulses and the elms` new leaves,-
And then I turned, and held my finger up,
And bade him mark that, howsoe`er the world
Went ill, as he related, certainly
The thrushes still sang in it.-At which word
His brow would soften,-and he bore with me
In melancholy patience, not unkind,
While, breaking into voluble ecstasy,
I flattered all the beauteous country round,
As poets use . . .the skies, the clouds, the fields,
The happy violets hiding from the roads
The primroses run down to, carrying gold,-
The tangled hedgerows, where the cows push out
Impatient horns and tolerant churning mouths
`Twixt dripping ash-boughs,-hedgerows all alive
With birds and gnats and large white butterflies
Which look as if the May-flower had sought life
And palpitated forth upon the wind,-
Hills, vales, woods, netted in a silver mist,
Farms, granges, doubled up among the hills,
And cattle grazing in the watered vales,
And cottage-chimneys smoking from the woods,
And cottage-gardens smelling everywhere,
Confused with smell of orchards. `See,` I said,
`And see! is God not with us on the earth?
Source
The script ran 0.001 seconds.