Agnes Mary Frances Duclaux (Robinson-Darmesteter) (1857–1944)

HERE beside my Paris fire, I sit alone and ponder

All my life of long ago that lies so far asunder;

‘Here, how came I thence?’ I say, and greater grows the wonder

As I recall the farms and fields and placid hamlets yonder.

… See, the meadow-sweet is white against the water-courses,

Marshy lands are kingcup-gay and bright with streams and sources,

Dew-bespangled shines the hill where half-abloom the gorse is;

And all the northern fallows steam beneath the ploughing horses.

There ’s the red-brick-chimney’d house, the ivied haunt of swallows,

All its garden up and down and full of hills and hollows;

Past the lawn, the sunken fence whose brink the laurel follows;

And then the knee-deep pasture where the herd for ever wallows!

So they’ve clipp’d the lilac bush: a thousand thousand pities!

’Twas the blue old-fashion’d sort that never grows in cities.

There we little children play’d and chaunted aimless ditties,

While oft th’ old grandsire looked at us and smiled his Nunc Dimittis!

Green, O green with ancient peace, and full of sap and sunny,

Lusty fields of Warwickshire, O land of milk and honey,

Might I live to pluck again a spike of agrimony,

A silver tormentilla leaf or ladysmock upon ye!

Patience!—for I keep at heart your pure and perfect seeming,

I can see you wide awake as clearly as in dreaming,

Softer, with an inner light, and dearer, to my deeming,

Than when beside your brooks at noon I watch’d the sallows gleaming!