Returning to the Fields

I was young, I was out of tune with the herd: My only love was for the hills and mountains. Unwitting I fell into the Web of the World's dust And was not free until my thirtieth year. The migrant bird longs for the old wood: The fish in the tank thinks of its native pool. I had rescued from wildness a patch of the Southern Moor And, still rustic, I returned to field and garden. My ground covers no more than ten acres: My thatched cottage has eight or nine rooms. Elms and willows cluster by the eaves: Peach trees and plum trees grow before the hall. Hazy, hazy the distant hamlets of men. Steady the smoke of the half-deserted village, A dog barks somewhere in the deep lanes, A cock crows at the top of the mulberry tree. At gate and courtyard—no murmur of the World's dust: In the empty rooms—leisure and deep stillness. Long I lived checked by the bars of a cage: Now I have turned again to Nature and Freedom.