The Poet’s Song

by Alfred Lord Tennyson

　　

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The rain had fallen, the Poet arose, He pass’d by the town and out of the street; A light wind blew from the gates of the sun, And waves of shadow went over the wheat; And he sat him down in a lonely place, And chanted a melody loud and sweet, That made the wild-swan pause in her cloud, And the lark drop down at his feet. The swallow stopt as he hunted the fly, The snake slipt under a spray, The wild hawk stood with the down on his beak, And stared, with his foot on the prey; And the nightingale thought, ‘I have sung many songs, But never a one so gay, For he sings of what the world will be When the years have died away.’

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