Health.

Innes, Pool in the Woods, 1891

The BREATH of MORNING

How beautiful and fresh the pastoral smell

   Of tedded hay breathes in this early morn!

Health in these meadows must in summer dwell,

   And take her walks among these fields of corn.

I cannot see her, yet her voice is out

On every breeze that fans my hair about.

   Although the Sun is scarcely out of bed,

And leans on ground as half awake from sleep,

   The boy hath left his mossy-thatched shed,

And bawls right lustily to cows and sheep;                                 

   Or taken with the woodbines overspread,

Climbs up to pluck them from their thorny bowers,

   Half drowned by drops which patter on his head

            From leaves bemoistened by night’s secret showers.

John Clare