The sky was in garlands of cloud,
     Winning scents from unnumbered new births,
     Pointed buds, where the woods were browned
     By a mouldered beechen shroud;
     Or over our meads of the vale,
     Such an answer to sun as he,
     Brave in his gold; to a sound,
     None sweeter, of woods flapping sail,
     With the first full flood of our year,
     For their voyage on lustreful sea: 
     Unto what curtained haven in chief,
     Will be writ in the book of the sere. 
     But surely the crew are we,
     Eager or stamped or bowed;
     Counted thinner at fall of the leaf. 
     Grief heard them, and passed like a bier. 
     Due Summerward, lo, they were set,
     In volumes of foliage proud,
     On the heave of their favouring tides,
     And their song broadened out to the cheer
     When a neck of the ramping surf
     Rattles thunder a boat overrides. 
     All smiles ran the highways wet;
     The worm drew its links from the turf;
     The bird of felicity loud
     Spun high, and a South wind blew. 
     Weak out of sheath downy leaves
     Of the beech quivered lucid as dew,
     Their radiance asking, who grieves;
     For nought of a sorrow they knew: 
     No space to the dread wrestle vowed,
     No chamber in shadow of night. 
     At times as the steadier breeze
     Flutter-huddled their twigs to a crowd,
     The beam of them wafted my sight
     To league-long sun upon seas: 
     The golden path we had crossed
     Many years, till her birthland swung
     Recovered to vision from lost,
     A light in her filial glance. 
     And sweet was her voice with the tongue,
     The speechful tongue of her France,
     Soon at ripple about us, like rills
     Ever busy with little:  away
     Through her Normandy, down where the mills
     Dot at lengths a rivercourse, grey
     As its bordering poplars bent
     To gusts off the plains above. 
     Old stone chateau and farms,
     Home of her birth and her love! 
     On the thread of the pasture you trace,
     By the river, their milk, for miles,
     Spotted once with the English tent,
     In days of the tocsin’s alarms,
     To tower of the tallest of piles,
     The country’s surveyor breast-high. 
     Home of her birth and her love! 
     Home of a diligent race;
     Thrifty, deft-handed to ply
     Shuttle or needle, and woo
     Sun to the roots of the pear
     Frogging each mud-walled cot. 
     The elders had known her in arms. 
     There plucked we the bluet, her hue
     Of the deeper forget-me-not;
     Well wedding her ripe-wheat hair.