The Valley
When August and the sultry summer's drouth
Parch all the plains and pale the mountain-tops
Where thick the pasture springs,
Unchanged, our valley sloping to the south
Is greener than the Irish isle, and drops
With waterfalls and springs.
The meadows by the river, tall with flowers.
The fountain leaping from the rocks above.
The simple ways of man,
The farms and forests of this vale of ours.
Are such, methinks, as gods and shepherds love,
And wait the flute of Pan.
The vale has seen unchanged a thousand years
Or more, and Mercury might wander back
And find, the same Auverne,
And greet the hollows of the mountain meres
Where round the crater's brim the rocks are black
Amid the beds of fern.
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