Hark, hearer, hear what I do; lend a thought now, make believe   
We are leafwhelmed somewhere with the hood   
Of some branchy bunchy bushybowered wood,   
Southern dene or Lancashire clough or Devon cleave,   
That leans along the loins of hills, where a candycoloured, where a gluegold-brown           
Marbled river, boisterously beautiful, between   
Roots and rocks is danced and dandled, all in froth and waterblowballs, down.   
We are there, when we hear a shout   
That the hanging honeysuck, the dogeared hazels in the cover   
Makes dither, makes hover   
And the riot of a rout   
Of, it must be, boys from the town   
Bathing: it is summer’s sovereign good.   
   
By there comes a listless stranger: beckoned by the noise   
He drops towards the river: unseen   
Sees the bevy of them, how the boys   
With dare and with downdolphinry and bellbright bodies huddling out,   
Are earthworld, airworld, waterworld thorough hurled, all by turn and turn about.   
   
This garland of their gambols flashes in his breast   
Into such a sudden zest   
Of summertime joys   
That he hies to a pool neighbouring; sees it is the best   
There; sweetest, freshest, shadowiest;   
Fairyland; silk-beech, scrolled ash, packed sycamore, wild wychelm, hornbeam fretty overstood   
By. Rafts and rafts of flake-leaves light, dealt so, painted on the air,    
Hang as still as hawk or hawkmoth, as the stars or as the angels there,   
Like the thing that never knew the earth, never off roots   
Rose. Here he feasts: lovely all is! No more: off with—down he dings   
His bleachèd both and woolwoven wear:   
Careless these in coloured wisp   
All lie tumbled-to; then with loop-locks   
Forward falling, forehead frowning, lips crisp   
Over finger-teasing task, his twiny boots   
Fast he opens, last he offwrings   
Till walk the world he can with bare his feet    
And come where lies a coffer, burly all of blocks   
Built of chancequarrièd, selfquainèd rocks   
And the water warbles over into, filleted with glassy grassy quicksilvery shivès and shoots   
And with heavenfallen freshness down from moorland still brims,   
Dark or daylight on and on. Here he will then, here he will the fleet    
Flinty kindcold element let break across his limbs   
Long. Where we leave him, froliclavish while he looks about him, laughs, swims.   
Enough now; since the sacred matter that I mean   
I should be wronging longer leaving it to float   
Upon this only gambolling and echoing-of-earth note—   
What is ... the delightful dene?   
Wedlock. What the water? Spousal love.
   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .
Father, mother, brothers, sisters, friends   
Into fairy trees, wild flowers, wood ferns   
Ranked round the bower
   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .