Nests in Elms

The rooks are cawing  up and down the trees!

Among their nests they caw. O sound I treasure,

Ripe as old music is, the summer's measure,

Sleep at her gossip, sylvan mysteries,

With prate and clamour to give zest of these—

In rune I trace the ancient law of pleasure,

Of love, of all the busy-ness of leisure,

With dream on dream of never-thwarted ease.

O homely birds, whose cry is harbinger

Of nothing sad, who know not anything

Of sea-birds' loneliness, of Procne's strife,

Rock round me when I die! So sweet it were

To die by open doors, with you on wing

Humming the deep security of life.