Explore "Faute de Mieux" by Edith Nesbit on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
When the corn is green and the poppies red / And the fields are crimson with love-lies-bleeding, / When the elms are black deep overhead / And the shade lies cool where the calves are feeding, / When the blackbird whistles the song of June, / When kine knee-deep in the pond are drowsing, / Leave pastoral peace -- come up through the noon / To the high chalk downs where the sheep are browsing.
Oh! sweet to dream in the noontide heat, / On the scented bed of thyme and clover, / With the air from the sea, blown keen and sweet, / And the wings of the wide sky folded over, / While, far in the blue, the skylark sings, / Renounce desire and renounce endeavour, / Forget life's little unworthy things / And dream that the dream will last for ever.
The love of your life, in your heart's hid shrine, / With its gifts and its torments, leave it sighing, / And I will bury the pain of mine / In the selfsame grave where its joy is lying.
Let me hold your hand for a quiet hour / In the wild thyme's scent and the clear blue weather, / Then come what may, we have plucked one flower, / This hour on the downs alone together.