Meadowsweet

Through grass, through amber'd cornfields, our slow Stream-- Fringed with its flags and reeds and rushes tall, And Meadowsweet, the chosen of them all By wandering children, yellow as the cream Of those great cows--winds on as in a dream By mill and footbridge, hamlet old and small (Red roofs, gray tower), and sees the sunset gleam On mullion'd windows of an ivied Hall. There, once upon a time, the heavy King Trod out its perfume from the Meadowsweet, Strown like a woman's love beneath his feet, In stately dance or jovial banqueting, When all was new; and in its wayfaring Our Streamlet curved, as now, through grass and wheat.