I never saw that land before, <br />And now can never see it again; <br />Yet, as if by acquaintance hoar <br />Endeared, by gladness and by pain, <br />Great was the affection that I bore <br /> <br />To the valley and the river small, <br />The cattle, the grass, the bare ash trees, <br />The chickens from the farmsteads, all <br />Elm-hidden, and the tributaries <br />Descending at equal interval; <br /> <br />The blackthorns down along the brook <br />With wounds yellow as crocuses <br />Where yesterday the labourer's hook <br />Had sliced them cleanly; and the breeze <br />That hinted all and nothing spoke. <br /> <br />I neither expected anything <br />Nor yet remembered: but some goal <br />I touched then; and if I could sing <br />What would not even whisper my soul <br />As I went on my journeying, <br /> <br />I should use, as the trees and birds did, <br />A language not to be betrayed; <br />And what was hid should still be hid <br />Excepting from those like me made <br />Who answer when such whispers bid.<br /><br />Edward Thomas<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/i-never-saw-that-land-before/
