In this lone, open glade I lie, <br />Screen'd by deep boughs on either hand; <br />And at its end, to stay the eye, <br />Those black-crown'd, red-boled pine-trees stand! <br /> <br />Birds here make song, each bird has his, <br />Across the girdling city's hum. <br />How green under the boughs it is! <br />How thick the tremulous sheep-cries come! <br /> <br />Sometimes a child will cross the glade <br />To take his nurse his broken toy; <br />Sometimes a thrush flit overhead <br />Deep in her unknown day's employ. <br /> <br />Here at my feet what wonders pass, <br />What endless, active life is here! <br />What blowing daisies, fragrant grass! <br />An air-stirr'd forest, fresh and clear. <br /> <br />Scarce fresher is the mountain-sod <br />Where the tired angler lies, stretch'd out, <br />And, eased of basket and of rod, <br />Counts his day's spoil, the spotted trout. <br /> <br />In the huge world, which roars hard by, <br />Be others happy if they can! <br />But in my helpless cradle I <br />Was breathed on by the rural Pan. <br /> <br />I, on men's impious uproar hurl'd, <br />Think often, as I hear them rave, <br />That peace has left the upper world <br />And now keeps only in the grave. <br /> <br />Yet here is peace for ever new! <br />When I who watch them am away, <br />Still all things in this glade go through <br />The changes of their quiet day. <br /> <br />Then to their happy rest they pass! <br />The flowers upclose, the birds are fed, <br />The night comes down upon the grass, <br />The child sleeps warmly in his bed. <br /> <br />Calm soul of all things! make it mine <br />To feel, amid the city's jar, <br />That there abides a peace of thine, <br />Man did not make, and cannot mar. <br /> <br />The will to neither strive nor cry, <br />The power to feel with others give! <br />Calm, calm me more! nor let me die <br />Before I have begun to live.<br /><br />Matthew Arnold<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/lines-written-in-kensington-gardens/
