Nature, Country, and the Open Air To Meadows Ye have been fresh and green, Where maids have spent their hours. You have beheld how they With wicker arks did come To kiss and bear away The richer cowslips home. You've heard them sweetly sing, But now we see none here Whose silv'ry feet did tread And with dishevelled hair Adorn'd this smoother mead. Like unthrifts, having spent Your stock, and needy grown, Your poor estates, alone. ROBERT HERRICK. The Brook I come from haunts of coot and hern,' I make a sudden sally, And sparkle out among the fern, By thirty hills I hurry down, 2 I chatter over stony ways 1hern: heron. thorps: villages. With many a curve my banks I fret I chatter, chatter, as I flow I wind about and in and out, And here and there a foamy flake With many a silvery waterbreak I steal by lawns and grassy plots, I move the sweet forget-me-nots |