Those hours are best when suddenly The voices of the world are still, And in that quiet place is heard The voice of one small singing bird, Alone within his quiet tree; When to one field that crowns a hill, With but the sky for neighbourhood, The crowding counties of my brain Give all their riches, lake and plain, Cornland and fell and pillared wood; When in a hill-top acre, bare For the seed’s use, I am aware Of all the beauty that an age Of earth has taught my eyes to see; When Pride and Generosity The Constant Heart and Evil Rage, Affection and Desire, and all The passions of experience Are no more tabled in my mind, Learning’s idolatry, but find Particularity of sense In daily fortitudes that fall From this or that companion, Or in an angry gossip’s word; When Music lives in one small bird, When in a furrowed hill we see All beauty in epitome— Those hours are best; for those belong To the lucidity of song. |