I love to see the old heath's withered brake <br />Mingle its crimpled leaves with furze and ling, <br />While the old heron from the lonely lake <br />Starts slow and flaps its melancholy wing, <br />An oddling crow in idle motion swing <br />On the half-rotten ash-tree's topmost twig, <br />Beside whose trunk the gypsy makes his bed. <br />Up flies the bouncing woodcock from the brig <br />Where a black quagmire quakes beneath the tread; <br />The fieldfares chatter in the whistling thorn <br />And for the haw round fields and closen rove, <br />And coy bumbarrels, twenty in a drove, <br />Flit down the hedgerows in the frozen plain <br />And hang on little twigs and start again.<br /><br />John Clare<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/emmonsail-s-heath-in-winter/
