May-Noon.

A poem by John Clare

How sweet it is, when suns get warmly high,
In the mid-noon, as May's first cowslip springs,
And the young cuckoo his soft ditty sings,
To wander out, and take a book; and lie
'Neath some low pasture-bush, by guggling springs
That shake the sprouting flag as crimpling by;
Or where the sunshine freckles on the eye
Through the half-clothed branches in the woods;
Where airy leaves of woodbines, scrambling nigh,
Are earliest venturers to unfold their buds;
And little rippling runnels curl their floods,
Bathing the primrose-peep, and strawberry wild,
And cuckoo-flowers just creeping from their hoods,
With the sweet season, like their bard, beguil'd.