There, spring lambs jam the sheepfold. In air <br />Stilled, silvered as water in a glass <br />Nothing is big or far. <br />The small shrew chitters from its wilderness <br />Of grassheads and is heard. <br />Each thumb-sized bird <br />Fits nimble-winged in thickets, and of good color. <br /> <br />Cloudrack and owl-hollowed willows slanting over <br />The bland Granta double their white and green <br />World under the sheer water <br />And ride that flux at anchor, upside down. <br />The punter sinks his pole. <br />In Byron's pool <br />Cattails part where the tame cygnets steer. <br /> <br />It is a country on a nursery plate. <br />Spotted cows revolve their jaws and crop <br />Red clover or gnaw beetroot <br />Bellied on a nimbus of sun-glazed buttercup. <br />Hedging meadows of benign <br />Arcadian green <br />The blood-berried hawthorn hides its spines with white. <br /> <br />Droll, vegetarian, the water rat <br />Saws down a reed and swims from his limber grove, <br />While the students stroll or sit, <br />Hands laced, in a moony indolence of love —- <br />Black-gowned, but unaware <br />How in such mild air <br />The owl shall stoop from his turret, the rat cry out.<br /><br />Sylvia Plath<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/watercolor-of-grantchester-meadows/
