E'en now some small or hidden seed,
Within, below, an English mead,
Waiting for sun and rain to make
A flower of it for my poor sake,
I then could wait till winds should tell,
For me there swayed or swung a bell,
Or reared a banner, peered a star,
Or curved a cup in woods afar.


I who had written that, I had found my first primrose and I could
not pluck it. I found it fair be sure. I find all England fair. The
shimmering mist and the tender rain, the red wallflower and the ivy
green, the singing birds and the shallow streams--all the country;
the blackened churches, the grass-grown churchyards, the hum of
streets the crowded omnibus, the gorgeous shops,--all the town. God!
do I not love it, my England? Yet not my England yet. Till she
proclaim it herself, I am not hers. I will make her mine. I will
write as no man has ever written about her, for very love of her. I
look out to-night from my narrow window and think how the moonlight
falls on Tintern, on Glastonbury, on Furness. How it falls on the
primrose I would not pluck. How it would like to fall on the tall
blue-bells in the wood. I see the lights of Oxford St. The omnibuses
rattle by, the people are going to see Irving, Wilson Barrett, Ellen
Terry. What line, of mine, what bar, what thought or phrase will turn
the silence into song, the copper into gold?--I come back from
the window and sit at the square centre table. It is rickety and
uncomfortable, useless to write on. I kick it. I would kick anything
that came in my way to-night. I am savage. Outside, a French piano
is playing that infernal waltz. A fair subject for kicking if you