Page:Beachy Head and Other Poems.pdf/32

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Among these cottage gardens, and how much Such artless nosegays, knotted with a rush By village housewife or her ruddy maid, Were welcome to me; soon and simply pleas'd.

An early worshipper at Nature's shrine; I loved her rudest scenes—warrens, and heaths, And yellow commons, and birch-shaded hollows, And hedge rows, bordering unfrequented lanes Bowered with wild roses, and the clasping woodbine Where purple tassels of the tangling vetch With bittersweet, and bryony inweave, And the dew fills the silver bindweed's cups— I loved to trace the brooks whose humid banks Nourish the harebell, and the freckled pagil; And stroll among o'ershadowing woods of beech,