Page:Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1918.djvu/1152

 EDWARD THOMAS

And willows, willow-herb, and grass, And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry, No whit less still and lonely fair Than the high cloudlets in the sky.

And for that minute a blackbird sang Close by, and round him, mistier, Farther and farther, all the birds Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.

��ALFRED NOYES

Art

YES' Beauty still rebels' Our dreams like clouds disperse:

She dwells In agate, marble, verse.

No false constraint be thine' But, for right walking, choose

The fine, The strict cothurnus, Muse.

Vainly ye seek to escape The toil ' The yielding phrase

Ye shape Is clay, not chrysoprase.

And all in vain ye scorn

That seeming ease which ne'er

Was born Of aught but love and care.

�� �