It faces west, and round the back and sides <br />High beeches, bending, hang a veil of boughs, <br />And sweep against the roof. Wild honeysucks <br />Climb on the walls, and seem to sprout a wish <br />(If we may fancy wish of trees and plants) <br />To overtop the apple trees hard-by. <br /> <br />Red roses, lilacs, variegated box <br />Are there in plenty, and such hardy flowers <br />As flourish best untrained. Adjoining these <br />Are herbs and esculents; and farther still <br />A field; then cottages with trees, and last <br />The distant hills and sky. <br /> <br />Behind, the scene is wilder. Heath and furze <br />Are everything that seems to grow and thrive <br />Upon the uneven ground. A stunted thorn <br />Stands here and there, indeed; and from a pit <br />An oak uprises, Springing from a seed <br />Dropped by some bird a hundred years ago. <br /> <br />In days bygone-- <br />Long gone--my father's mother, who is now <br />Blest with the blest, would take me out to walk. <br />At such a time I once inquired of her <br />How looked the spot when first she settled here. <br />The answer I remember. 'Fifty years <br />Have passed since then, my child, and change has marked <br />The face of all things. Yonder garden-plots <br />And orchards were uncultivated slopes <br />O'ergrown with bramble bushes, furze and thorn: <br />That road a narrow path shut in by ferns, <br />Which, almost trees, obscured the passers-by. <br /> <br />Our house stood quite alone, and those tall firs <br />And beeches were not planted. Snakes and efts <br />Swarmed in the summer days, and nightly bats <br />Would fly about our bedrooms. Heathcroppers <br />Lived on the hills, and were our only friends; <br />So wild it was when we first settled here.'<br /><br />Thomas Hardy<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/domicilium/
