Green Glass Beads

by Jacqueline Wilson

  Where I was used to swing,

  And thought the air must rush as fresh

  To swallows on the wing;

  My spirit flew in feathers then,

  That is so heavy now,

  And summer pools could hardly cool

  The fever on my brow!

  I remember, I remember

  The fir-trees dark and high;

  I used to think their slender tops

  Were close against the sky:

  It was a childish ignorance,

  But now ’tis little joy

  To know I’m farther off from heav’n

  Than when I was a boy.

  Thomas Hood

  Cottage

  When I live in a Cottage

  I shall keep in my Cottage

  Two different Dogs

  Three creamy Cows

  Four giddy Goats

  Five pewter Pots

  Six silver Spoons

  Seven busy Beehives

  Eight ancient Appletrees

  Nine red Rosebushes

  Ten teeming Teapots

  Eleven chirping Chickens

  Twelve cosy Cats with their kittenish Kittens

  and

  One blessèd Baby in a Basket.

  That’s what I’ll have when I live in my Cottage.

  Eleanor Farjeon

  The Lake Isle of Innisfree

  I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,

  And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:

  Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,

  And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

  And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,

  Dropping from the veils of the morningto where the cricket sings;

  There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,

  And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

  I will arise and go now, for always night and day

  I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;

  While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,

  I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

  W. B. Yeats

  The Way through the Woods

  They shut the road through the woods

  Seventy years ago.

  Weather and rain have undone it again,

  And now you would never know

  There was once a road through the woods

  Before they planted the trees.

  It is underneath the coppice and heath,

  And the thin anemones.

  Only the keeper sees

  That, where the ring-dove broods,

  And the badgers roll at ease,

  There was once a road through the woods.

  Yet, if you enter the woods

  Of a summer evening late,

  When the night-air cools on the trout-ringed pools

  Where the otter whistles his mate,

  (They fear not men in the woods,

  Because they see so few.)

  You will hear the beat of a horse’s feet,

  And the swish of a skirt in the dew,

  Steadily cantering through

  The misty solitudes,

  As though they perfectly knew

  The old lost road through the woods . . .

  But there is no road through the woods.

  Rudyard Kipling

  Adlestrop

  Yes. I remember Adlestrop –

  The name, because one afternoon

  Of heat the express-train drew up there

  Unwontedly. It was late June.

  The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.

  No one left and no one came

  On the bare platform. What I saw

  Was Adlestrop – only the name

  And willows, willow-herb, and grass,

  And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,

  No whit less still and lonely fair

  Than the high cloudlets in the sky.

  And for that minute a blackbird sang

  Close by, and round him, mistier,

  Farther and farther, all the birds

  Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.

  Edward Thomas

  The Counties

  Saturday 7 August 2010

  (It was announced that county names could disappear by 2016 after Royal Mail unveiled plans to delete them from its database)

  But I want to write to an Essex girl,

  greeting her warmly.

  But I want to write to a Shropshire lad,

  brave boy, home from the army,

  and I want to write to the Lincolnshire Poacher

  to hear of his hare

  and to an aunt in Bedfordshire

  who makes a wooden hill of her stair.

  But I want to post a rose to a Lancashire lass,

  red, I’ll pick it,

  and I want to write to a Middlesex mate

  for tickets for cricket.

  But I want to write to the Ayrshire cheesemaker

  and his good cow

  and it is my duty to write to the Queen at Berkshire

  in praise of Slough.

  But I want to write to the National Poet of Wales at Ceredigion

  in celebration

  and I want to write to the Dorset Giant

  in admiration

  and I want to write to a widow in Rutland

  in commiseration

  and to the Inland Revenue in Yorkshire

  in desperation.

  But I want to write to my uncle in Clackmannanshire

  in his kilt

  and to my scrumptious cousin in Somerset

  with her cidery lilt.

  But I want to write to two ladies in Denbighshire,

  near Llangollen

  and I want to write to a laddie in Lanarkshire,

  Dear Lachlan . . .

  But I want to write to the Cheshire Cat,

  returning its smile.

  But I want to write the names of the Counties down

  for my own child

  and may they never be lost to her . . .

  all the birds of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire . . .

  Carol Ann Duffy

  RAINBOWS, MOONS AND STARS

  Spell to Bring a Smile

  Come down Rainbow

  Rainbow come down

  I have a space for you

  in my small face

  If my face is too small for you

  take a space in my chest

  If my chest is too small for you

  take a space in my belly

  If my belly is too small for you

  then take every part of me

  Come down Rainbow

  Rainbow come down

  You can eat me from head to toe

  John Agard

  My Heart Leaps Up

  My heart leaps up when I behold

  A rainbow in the sky:

  So was it when my life began;

  So is it now I am a man;

  So be it when I shall grow old,

  Or let me die!

  The Child is father of the Man;

  And I could wish my days to be

  Bound each to each by natural piety.

  William Wordsworth

  Above the Dock

  Above the quiet dock in midnight,

  Tangled in the tall mast’s corded height,

  Hangs the moon. What seemed so far away

  is but a child’s balloon, forgotten after play.

  T. E. Hulme

  Lemon Moon

  On a hot and thirsty summer night,

  The moon’s a wedge of lemon light

  Sitting low among the trees,

  Close enough for you to squeeze

  And make a moonade, icy-sweet,

  To cool your summer-dusty heat.

  Beverly McLoughland

  The Moon Landing

  July 1969

  To celebrate

  the first moonwalk<
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  I invented

  my own TV

  All it took

  was a cardboard box

  some bottle tops

  a spot of glue

  and a piece of card –

  on which I drew

  an orange moon

  with a tiny astronaut man

  on top

  Nearly everyone

  came round

  our house

  on the big day

  And the whole world

  seemed to stop breathing

  for a moment

  as we watched

  those fuzzy pictures

  and listened

  to those crackly voices

  travelling thousands

  of miles

  from the moon

  into our home

  In fact

  my aunty

  reckoned my TV

  was even better

  than watching

  the real thing –

  so she put it

  in the window

  so everyone passing

  could see

  my paper moon

  James Carter

  Where Am I?

  There are mountains here, and craters,

  and places with beautiful names:

  The Bay of Rainbows,

  The Lake of Dreams,

  The Sea of Nectar,

  The Sea of Tranquillity.

  There is no water

  in the seas or the lakes.

  The hottest days

  are hotter than boiling water.

  The nights are colder

  than anywhere on Earth.

  I can see stars very clearly,

  and nearer than them,

  something wonderful. Imagine

  a huge blue and white marble

  glowing in a black sky.

  Wendy Cope

  The Heavenly City

  I sigh for the heavenly country,

  Where the heavenly people pass,

  And the sea is as quiet as a mirror

  Of beautiful, beautiful glass.

  I walk in the heavenly field,

  With lilies and poppies bright,

  I am dressed in a heavenly coat

  Of polished white.

  When I walk in the heavenly parkland

  My feet on the pastures are bare,

  Tall waves the grass, but no harmful

  Creature is there.

  At night I fly over the housetops,

  And stand on the bright moony beams;

  Gold are all heaven’s rivers,

  And silver her streams.

  Stevie Smith

  The More Loving One

  Looking up at the stars, I know quite well

  That, for all they care, I can go to hell,

  But on earth indifference is the least

  We have to dread from man or beast.

  How should we like it were stars to burn

  With a passion for us we could not return?

  If equal affection cannot be,

  Let the more loving one be me.

  Admirer as I think I am

  Of stars that do not give a damn,

  I cannot, how I see them, say

  I missed one terribly all day.

  Were all stars to disappear or die,

  I should learn to look at an empty sky

  And feel its total dark sublime,

  Though this might take me a little time.

  W. H. Auden

  When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer

  When I heard the learn’d astronomer,

  When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,

  When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,

  When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,

  How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,

  Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,

  In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,

  Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

  Walt Whitman

  Index of First Lines

  A fairy went a-marketing ref1

  Above the quiet dock in midnight ref1

  And staying inside the lines ref1

  Annabel-Emily Huntington-Horne ref1

  As I walked out one evening ref1

  At the top of the house the apples are laid in rows ref1

  Aunt Jennifer’s tigers prance across a screen ref1

  Break, break, break ref1

  But I want to write to an Essex girl ref1

  Clownlike, happiest on your hands ref1

  Come down Rainbow ref1

  Come live with me and be my Love ref1

  Dad keeps Mum’s favourite dress ref1

  Dear God ref1

  Dear Grandmamma, with what we give ref1

  Dear Mum ref1

  Do I love you ref1

  Do you remember an Inn ref1

  Don’t bite your nails, Amanda! ref1

  ‘Established’ is a good word; much used in garden books ref1

  Everyone grumbled. The sky was grey ref1

  Fear no more the heat o’ the sun ref1

  Fly away, fly away, over the sea ref1

  For I will consider my cat Jeoffry ref1

  For months he taught us, stiff-faced ref1

  Foxgloves on the moon keep to dark caves ref1

  Full fathom five thy father lies ref1

  Fur is soft, skin isn’t ref1

  Good girls ref1

  Grandad used to be a pop star ref1

  Half-hidden in a graveyard ref1

  He brought her an apple. She would not eat ref1

  He was seven and I was six, my Brendon Gallacher ref1

  Her day out from the workhouse-ward, she stands ref1

  How do I love thee? Let me count the ways ref1

  I am a witch, and a kind old witch ref1

  I can remember. I can remember ref1

  I fear it’s very wrong of me ref1

  I heard you were coming and ref1

  I must not think of thee; and, tired yet strong ref1

  I remember, I remember ref1

  I sigh for the heavenly country ref1

  I took her for my kind of person ref1

  I wander’d lonely as a cloud ref1

  I was as good as gold, an angel, said ta very much, no thanks ref1

  I was best friends with Sabah ref1

  I was writing my doll’s name on the back of her neck ref1

  I went out to the hazel wood ref1

  I went to school ref1

  I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree ref1

  I will make you brooches and toys for your delight ref1

  If no one ever marries me, – ref1

  I’m nobody! Who are you? ref1

  I’m not ref1

  In among the silver birches ref1

  In Art I drew a park ref1

  Isabel met an enormous bear ref1

  It was a little captive cat ref1

  It was not in the winter ref1

  I’ve found a small dragon in the woodshed ref1

  Jellicle Cats come out tonight ref1

  Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota ref1

  Leaping and dancing ref1

  Lilies are white ref1

  Looking up at the stars, I know quite well ref1

  Love set you going like a fat gold watch ref1

  Loveliest of trees, the cherry now ref1

  maggie and milly and molly and may ref1

  Marcia and I went over the curve ref1

  Me and my best pal (well, she was ref1

  Minnie and Winnie ref1

  Morning and evening ref1

  Mother, I love you so ref1

  Mother said if I wore this hat ref1

  Mrs Mackenzie’s quite stern ref1

  Mum and me had a row yesterday ref1

  My baby brother makes s
o much noise ref1

  My friend ref1

  My heart is like a singing bird ref1

  My heart leaps up when I behold ref1

  My team ref1

  My turn for Audrey Pomegranate ref1

  No one makes soup like my Grandpa’s ref1

  Nobody heard him, the dead man ref1

  Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white ref1

  Nuns, now: ladies in black hoods ref1

  Nymph, nymph, what are your beads? ref1

  O lovely O most charming pug ref1

  ‘O what can ail thee, Knight-at-arms ref1

  Of all the girls that are so smart ref1

  Oh I’m in love with the janitor’s boy ref1

  On a hot and thirsty summer night ref1

  On either side the river lie ref1

  On the first day of Christmas ref1

  Our teacher’s pet ref1

  Over hill, over dale ref1

  Prior Knowledge was a strange boy ref1

  Remember me when I am gone away ref1

  Remember, remember, there’s many a thing ref1

  Round about the cauldron go ref1

  Sabrina fair ref1

  Saris hang on the washing line ref1

  See, they are clearing the sawdust course ref1

  Seventeen years ago you said ref1

  Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? ref1

  She went, to plain-work, and to purling brooks ref1

  She wished she could fly ref1

  Since Christmas they have lived with us ref1

  Sleep, baby, sleep ref1

  Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone ref1

  The cat went here and there ref1

  The Cow comes home swinging ref1

  The fairy child loved her spider ref1

  The friendly cow, all red and white ref1

  The long-legged girl who takes goal-kicks is me ref1

  The new girl stood at Miss Moon’s desk ref1

  The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea ref1

  The wind sings its gusty song ref1

  There are mountains here, and craters ref1

  There, in a meadow, by the river’s side ref1

  There once was a frog ref1

  There was a naughty boy ref1