Under the shining helms
Of piled white cloud
A sombre screen of elms
Is set to shroud
The little red-roofed inn
From the midday glare.
Its smoke climbs straight and thin
Through windless air,
And breaks on the sombre boughs
To an azure bloom.
But we, who know the house
And the clean-swept room,
Enter and loudly ask
Huge Mrs. Reece
To draw from the new-tapped cask
A pint apiece
Topped with a creamy crown
And clear and cool
As the trout-stream lagging brown
In its rock-carved pool.
Then, after talk and drink,
We’ll rise and go
To the brown stream’s trembling brink,
To crouch and throw
A tinselled fly, till the trout
That sulks alone
Is artfully wheedled out
From his shadowy stone.