rough winds do shake the darling buds of may,
and summer's lease hath all too short a date;
sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
i adore this and thinking of it yesterday before the migraine hit prompted me to get this, well read book from one of my many, many bookshelves...
it just seems to be the most 'perfick' book to read, while sitting in an english country garden, where the birds are singing, the skies are blue and you are faced with the prospect of gorgeous ripe strawberries for tea!
*~*which takes me to this*~*
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!
Robert Browning (1812-1889)