Larches

Larches are most fitting small red hills That rise like swollen antheaps likeably And modest before big things like near Malvern Or Cotswold's farther early Italian Blue arrangement; unassuming as the Cowslips, celandines, buglewort and daisies That trinket out the green swerves like a child's game. O never so careless or lavish as here, I thought, 'You beauty! I must rise soon one dawn time And ride to see the first beam strike on you Of gold or ruddy recognisance over Crickley level or Bredon sloping down. I must play tunes like Bums, or sing like David, A saying out of what the hill leaves unexprest The tale or song that lives in it, and is sole, A round red thing, green upright things of flame It is May, and the conceited cuckoo toots and whoos his name.