It was much the same, no doubt,
When nature first laid down
These forms in his youthful heart.
Only the windmill is gone
Which made a miller’s son
Attentive to the clouds.
This is the vale he knew –
Its games of sun and shower,
Willow and breeze, the truant
Here-and-there of the Stour;
And an immutable church tower
To polarize the view.
Yet, earnestly though we look
At such hard facts, the mill,
The lucid tower and the lock
Are something less than real.
For this was never the vale
He saw and showed unique –
A landscape of the heart,
Of passion nursed on calm,
Where cloud and stream drew out
His moods, and love became
A brush in his hand, and the elm tree
Lived like a stroke of art.
His sunburst inspiration
Made earthly forms so true
To life, so new to vision,
That now the actual view
Seems a mere phantom, through
Whose blur we glimpse creation.
It wears a golden fleece
Of light. However dull
The day, one only sees here
His fresh and flying colours –
A paradise vale where all is
Movement and all at peace.