Oh, to be in England

Due to technical difficulties, my blog is currently in a doldrum. Consequently, I found it proper to put up this lovely poem by Robert Browning in order to keep up the frequency of posts (four a month as a minimum). It is not April, Eliot's cruellest month, nor am I abroad pining for my native home, yet I have recently felt a growing desire to see England again, and since Browning wrote this in Italy, where I've spent a week myself this summer, I thought it a thematic fit.


Home thoughts, from abroad

Oh, to be in England
Now that April's there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England—now!

And after April, when May follows,
And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows!
Hark, where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge
Leans to the field and scatters on the clover
Blossoms and dewdrops—at the bent spray's edge—
That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture!
And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,
All will be gay when noontide wakes anew
The buttercups, the little children's dower
—Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!