Puck of Pook's Hill

She has no strong white arms to fold you,

But the ten-times-fingering weed to hold you—

Out on the rocks where the tide has rolled you.

Cities and Thrones and Powers,

Stand in Time's eye,

Almost as long as flowers,

Which daily die:

But, as new buds put forth

To glad new men,

Out of the spent and unconsidered Earth,

The Cities rise again.

Of all the trees that grow so fair,

Old England to adorn,

Greater are none beneath the Sun,

Than Oak, and Ash, and Thorn.

Five and twenty ponies

Trotting through the dark—

Brandy for the Parson,

'Baccy for the Clerk.

Them that asks no questions isn't told a lie—

Watch the wall, my darling, while the gentlemen go by!