The Poetry Corner

May-Noon.

By John Clare

How sweet it is, when suns get warmly high, In the mid-noon, as May's first cowslip springs, And the young cuckoo his soft ditty sings, To wander out, and take a book; and lie 'Neath some low pasture-bush, by guggling springs That shake the sprouting flag as crimpling by; Or where the sunshine freckles on the eye Through the half-clothed branches in the woods; Where airy leaves of woodbines, scrambling nigh, Are earliest venturers to unfold their buds; And little rippling runnels curl their floods, Bathing the primrose-peep, and strawberry wild, And cuckoo-flowers just creeping from their hoods, With the sweet season, like their bard, beguil'd.