My footpath left the pleasant farms and lanes,
     Soft cottage-smoke, straight cocks a-crow, gay flowers;
     Beyond the wheel-ruts of the wains,
     Across a heath I walked for hours,
     And met its rival tenants, rays and rains.

     Still in my view mile-distant firs appeared,
     When, under a patched channel-bank enriched
     With foxglove whose late bells drooped seared,
     Behold, a family had pitched
     Their camp, and labouring the low tent upreared.

     Here, too, were many children, quick to scan
     A new thing coming; swarthy cheeks, white teeth: 
     In many-coloured rags they ran,
     Like iron runlets of the heath. 
     Dispersed lay broth-pot, sticks, and drinking-can.

     Three girls, with shoulders like a boat at sea
     Tipped sideways by the wave (their clothing slid
     From either ridge unequally),
     Lean, swift and voluble, bestrid
     A starting-point, unfrocked to the bent knee.

     They raced; their brothers yelled them on, and broke
     In act to follow, but as one they snuffed
     Wood-fumes, and by the fire that spoke
     Of provender, its pale flame puffed,
     And rolled athwart dwarf furzes grey-blue smoke.

     Soon on the dark edge of a ruddier gleam,
     The mother-pot perusing, all, stretched flat,
     Paused for its bubbling-up supreme: 
     A dog upright in circle sat,
     And oft his nose went with the flying steam.

     I turned and looked on heaven awhile, where now
     The moor-faced sunset broadened with red light;
     Threw high aloft a golden bough,
     And seemed the desert of the night
     Far down with mellow orchards to endow.

     Earth and man

     I

     On her great venture, Man,
     Earth gazes while her fingers dint the breast
     Which is his well of strength, his home of rest,
     And fair to scan.

     II

     More aid than that embrace,
     That nourishment, she cannot give:  his heart
     Involves his fate; and she who urged the start
     Abides the race.

     III

     For he is in the lists
     Contentious with the elements, whose dower
     First sprang him; for swift vultures to devour
     If he desists.

     IV

     His breath of instant thirst
     Is warning of a creature matched with strife,
     To meet it as a bride, or let fall life
     On life’s accursed.

     V

     No longer forth he bounds
     The lusty animal, afield to roam,
     But peering in Earth’s entrails, where the gnome
     Strange themes propounds.

     VI

     By hunger sharply sped
     To grasp at weapons ere he learns their use,
     In each new ring he bears a giant’s thews,
     An infant’s head.