The Bird-Catcher Read Online Free

dead.
    Â Â Â Â But still we bow the head,
    And still the blind obstruction of the past
    Â Â Â Â Builds over us a vast
    Cold sepulchre, an incubus of stone.

Heard in a Lane
    When the wet earth dreamed of spring
    In early February
    And the first gnats danced on fragile wing,
    I stood where the air was warm and still
    In a deep lane under a hill
    Gazing at a copse of birches
    That ran uphill to meet blue sky.
    From slim white trunks the tapering branches spread
    To a web of rosy twigs. But from their perches
    In the high hawthorn-fence
    Two robins chuckled loudly, and one said
    In his clear, dewy speech: “look how he stares
    Like a daft owl in the sun!” The other broke
    To trills of scornful laughter and then spoke:—
    â€œThese huge unfeathered creatures are so dense
    That their slow vision sees
    Nothing but rooted wooden trees
    In those white, living flames that leap from the hill
    And the crown of rosy smoke that hangs so still.”

Rain in Spring
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Cloud-films that hardly stain
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â The sky’s blue hall
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Gather, dissolve, and fall
    In sudden visitations of bright rain.
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Then the soft voice of seas
    Is heard in the green precincts of the trees—
    A long, still hushing; then the subtler hiss
    Of thousand-bladed grass: then, over this,
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Out of the trees’ high tops
    Â Â Â Â Â Â The ticking of larger drops
    Â Â Â Â Â Â That small leaf-tricklings fill
    Till, one by one, whenever the wet leaves stir,
    From leaf to overweighted leaf they spill,
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Heavy as quicksilver.
    These are the showers of spring,
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Pilgrims that pass
    And scatter crystal seed among the grass;
    Â Â Â Â Â Â That make the still ponds sing
    Delicate tunes and leave the hedgerows filled
    With moist and odorous warmth, brim with blue haze
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Hollows of hills and glaze
    Each leaf with lacquer cunningly distilled
    Â Â Â Â Â Â From sunlight; they that fling
    A brightness along the edge of everything,
    And the frail splendour of the rainbow build
    To span six miles of meadowland, as though
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Each rain-dipped flower below
    Had breathed its colour up through the bright air
    Â Â Â Â Â Â To hang in beauty there.

Blue Night
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Blue waves of Night
    Brim the warm hollows of the hills
    Â Â Â Â Â Â And wrap from sight
    Fields of our earth and the high fields of air.
    Slowly the great bowl of the evening fills
    With heavy darkness, till the fading sense
    Of sight falls from us, and beneath a dense
    And denser gloom all visible things are thinned
    To empty shades,—to nothing. But we hear,
    Mysteriously swayed, now far, now near,
    Â Â Â Â Â Â The long hush of hidden rivers,
    Â Â Â Â Â Â This hiss of a hidden bough that shivers
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Beneath an unfelt wind.

On the Salt Marsh
    Here where the lark sings overhead
    And the grey sheep nibble the short salt herb
    And the bugloss lifts a sky-blue head
    And only the sea’s long sighs disturb
    The silence spread
    Like a great arch overhead;
    Here where the very air is peace
    And our footfalls stir not the smallest sound
    On a turf as soft as the ewes’ soft fleece,
    Passion has walked, till the very ground
    Pulsed like a monstrous heart, and fear
    And struggle and hate roared down the breeze
    Till even the hill-perched farms could hear.
    For see, in a spiny whin-bush bleached,
    This seaweed that was flung to parch
    A mile inland, when the sea thrice breached
    The long sea-wall and the whins were whirled
    Breast-high in a tumbling tide, wind-hurled
    On a stormy night in March.

Frost in Lincoln’s Inn Fields
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Lifeless, still, in the frosty air
    Â Â Â Â Â Â The old stone