Out of us all
 That make rhymes
 Will you choose
 Sometimes -
 As the winds use
 A crack in a wall
 Or a drain,
 Their joy or their pain
 To whistle through -
 Choose me,
 You English words?

 I know you:
 You are light as dreams,
 Tough as oak,
 Precious as gold,
 As poppies and corn,
 Or an old cloak:
 Sweet as our birds
 To the ear,
 As the burnet rose
 In the heat
 Of Midsummer:
 Strange as the races
 Of dead and unborn:
 Strange and sweet
 Equally,
 And familiar,
 To the eye,
 As the dearest faces
 That a man knows,
 And as lost homes are:
 But though older far
 Than oldest yew, -
 As our hills are, old, -
 Worn new
 Again and again:
 Young as our streams
 After rain:
 And as dear
 As the earth which you prove
 That we love.

 Make me content
 With some sweetness
 From Wales
 Whose nightingales
 Have no wings, -
 From Wiltshire and Kent
 And Herefordshire, -
 And the villages there, -
 From the names, and the things
 No less.
 Let me sometimes dance
 With you,
 Or climb
 Or stand perchance
 In ecstasy,
 Fixed and free
 In a rhyme,
 As poets do.