I Never Saw That Land Before + 

I never saw that land before, + 

And now can never see it again; + 

Yet, as if by acquaintance hoar + 

Endeared, by gladness and by pain, + 

Great was the affection that I bore + 

To the valley and the river small, + 

The cattle, the grass, the bare ash trees, + 

The chickens from the farmsteads, all + 

Elm-hidden, and the tributaries + 

Descending at equal interval; + 

The blackthorns down along the brook + 

With wounds yellow as crocuses + 

Where yesterday the labourer’s hook + 

Had sliced them cleanly; and the breeze + 

That hinted all and nothing spoke. + 

I neither expected anything + 

Nor yet remembered: but some goal + 

I touched then; and if I could sing + 

What would not even whisper my soul + 

As I went on my journeying, + 

I should use, as the trees and birds did, + 

A language not to be betrayed; + 

And what was hid should still be hid + 

Excepting from those like me made + 

Who answer when such whispers bid. + 