Time's wheel has paused whilst I've been lying here;
Here on the warm short turf, drowsy and alone,
And the sun has stood still in the west-south-west there,
Shining and shining and shining its best there,
And the sea like a taut line across the mouth of the valley
Has shimmered and shone,
And all the world been drenched in golden haze.
A gold entranced age has passed since I arose
Out of a warm bed and went out into air cool as well-water
And walked among abrupt little banks of mist,
Crisp yet filmy, like gauze,
Knee high in a meadow,
Among horses and cows munching grass;
And found among the grass myself
Sudden white mushrooms, pink gilled, cool as dew -
That was not this morning,
For I've been lying here through an enchanted age;
Whilst a lark has been letting down from the sky
A tinkling chain of song:
Letting it down and then catching it up again, link by link,
But never breaking it;
And I have marvelled he has never snapt so fragile a thing.
And sheep have been crop, crop, cropping short grass;
And away over there, like a fresco, have gone kine
Dreamily, in endless line,
To some dim byre where in the shadows one will milk them,
Making a pleasant hiss of spurting milk;
One who has called them, called them over the hill,
Since the birth of time.
And that little boat on the sea there has never moved,
But I expect the tide will have moved,
Will have made up to the mouth of the valley,
And it is time to go and bathe -
To go and bathe in the tide that has been making
And breaking, in a smooth monotonous song,
Through all these spellbound hours.
Yet when erelong I turn on Autumn's brink,
To view again this Summer's traversed way,
Its journey then will be
But a brief ecstasy -
Not half so long as this one languorous day.
NOTE: kine is a old terms for cows.