Home Thoughts - Ghizela Rowe

Home Thoughts from Abroad by Robert Browning

O to be in England

Now that April's there

And whoever wakes in England

Sees some morning unaware

That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf

Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf

While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough

In England now

And after April when May follows

And the whitethroat builds and all the swallows

Hark where my blossom'd pear-tree in my hedge

Leans to the field and scatters on the clover

Blossoms and dewdrops at the bent spray's edge

That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over

Lest you should think he never could recapture

The first fine careless rapture

And though the fields look rough with hoary dew

All will be gay when noontide wakes anew

The buttercups the little children's dower

Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower