The lads in their hundreds to Lud… There’s men from the barn and the… The lads for the girls and the lad… And there with the rest are the la… There’s chaps from the town and th…

Loitering with a vacant eye Along the Grecian gallery, And brooding on my heavy ill, I met a statue standing still. Still in marble stone stood he,

Farewell to a name and a number Recalled again To darkness and silence and slumbe… In blood and pain. So ceases and turns to the thing

When I would muse in boyhood The wild green woods among, And nurse resolves and fancies Because the world was young, It was not foes to conquer,

Here dead we lie Because we did not choose To live and shame the land From which we sprung. Life, to be sure,

At the door of my own little hovel… Reading a novel I sat; And as I was reading the novel A gnat flew away with my hat. As fast as a fraudulent banker

The mill-stream, now that noises c… Is all that does not hold its peac… Under the bridge it murmurs by, And here are night and hell and I… Who made the world I cannot tell;

CHORUS: O suitably-attired-in-… Head of a traveller, wherefore see… Whence by what way how purposed ar… To this well-nightingaled vicinity… My object in inquiring is to know.

'Tis time, I think, by Wenlock to… The golden broom should blow; The hawthorn sprinkled up and down Should charge the land with snow. Spring will not wait the loiterer’…

The stinging nettle only Will still be found to stand: The numberless, the lonely, The thronger of the land, The leaf that hurts the hand.

The rain, it streams on stone and… The boot clings to the clay. Since all is done that’s due and r… Let’s home; and now, my lad, good-… For I must turn away.

As through the wild green hills of… The train ran, changing sky and sh… And far behind, a fading crest, Low in the forsaken west Sank the high-reared head of Clee…

Far in a western brookland That bred me long ago The poplars stand and tremble By pools I used to know. There, in the windless night-time,

Now hollow fires burn out to black… And lights are guttering low: Square your shoulders, lift your p… And leave your friends and go. Oh never fear, man, nought’s to dr…