Summer pleasures they are gone like to visions every
And the cloudy days of autumn and of winter cometh onI tried to call them back but unbidden they are
Far away from heart and eye and for ever far
Dear heart and can it be that such raptures meet decayI thought them all eternal when by Langley Bush I layI thought them joys eternal when I used to shout and
On its bank at 'clink and bandy' 'chock' and 'taw' and ducking
Where silence sitteth now on the wild heath as her
Like a ruin of the past all
When I used to lie and sing by old eastwells boiling
When I used to tie the willow boughs together for a 'swing'And fish with crooked pins and thread and never catch a
With heart just like a feather- now as heavy as a
When beneath old lea close oak I the bottom branches
To make our harvest cart like so many working
And then to cut a straw at the brook to have a soakO I never dreamed of parting or that trouble had a
Or that pleasures like a flock of birds would ever take to
Leaving nothing but a little naked
When jumping time away on old cross berry
And eating awes like sugar plumbs ere they had lost the
And skipping like a leveret before the peep of
On the rolly polly up and downs of pleasant swordy
When in round oaks narrow lane as the south got black
We sought the hollow ash that was shelter from the
With our pockets full of peas we had stolen from the
How delicious was the dinner time on such a showry dayO words are poor receipts for what time hath stole
The ancient pulpit trees and the
When for school oer 'little field' with its brook and wooden
Where I swaggered like a man though I was not half so
While I held my little plough though twas but a willow
And drove my team along made of nothing but a name'Gee hep' and 'hoit' and 'woi'- O I never call to
These pleasant names of places but I leave a sigh
While I see the little mouldywharps hang sweeing to the
On the only aged willow that in all the field
And nature hides her face where theyre sweeing in their
And in a silent murmuring
Here was commons for the hills where they seek for freedom
Though every commons gone and though traps are set to
The little homeless miners- O it turns my bosom
When I think of old 'sneap green' puddocks nook and hilly
Where bramble bushes grew and the daisy gemmed in
And the hills of silken grass like to cushions to the
When we threw the pissmire crumbs when we's nothing else to
All leveled like a desert by the never weary
All vanished like the sun where that cloud is passing
All settled here for ever on its browI never thought that joys would run away from
Or that boys would change their minds and forsake such summer
But alack I never dreamed that the world had other
To petrify first feelings like the fable into
Till I found the pleasure past and a winter come at
Then the fields were sudden bare and the sky got
And boyhoods pleasing haunts like a blossom in the
Was shrivelled to a withered weed and trampled down and
Till vanished was the morning spring and set that summer
And winter fought her battle strife and
By Langley bush I roam but the bush hath left its
On cowper green I stray tis a desert strange and
And spreading lea close oak ere decay had penned its
To the axe of the spoiler and self interest fell a
And cross berry way and old round oaks narrow
With its hollow trees like pulpits I shall never see
Inclosure like a Buonaparte let not a thing
It levelled every bush and tree and levelled every
And hung the moles for traitors - though the brook is running
It runs a naked brook cold and chillO had I known as then joy had left the paths of menI had watched her night and day besure and never slept
And when she turned to go O I'd caught her mantle
And wooed her like a lover by my lonely side to
Aye knelt and worshipped on as love in beautys
And clung upon her smiles as a bee upon her
And gave her heart my poesys all cropt in a sunny
As keepsakes and pledges to fade
But love never heeded to treasure up the
So it went the comon road with decay.
