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This poem was first published in Songs in Wiltshire (1909), and also appeared in Selected Poems (1925).
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What troubles have I?
The woods and the sky,
The wold and the weald
Are my kingdom, my field.
I am lord, I am king
Of winter and spring,
Of autumn and summer,
And every new-comer
Attends when I sing, when I sing.
The birds of the woodland bow down to my law,
The hawk, and the kestrel, the eagle and daw.
Caw! Caw! Caw!
Behold, how I shine!
All glory is mine,
All colour and glitter
Of beauty - and better -
I treasure and take
To my breast, to my back,
In folds and in tangles
Of rays and of spangles,
And smoothness of velvety black.
In summer and harvest, in frost and in thaw
Earth scatters and litters some food for my maw.
Caw! Caw! Caw!
My voice is as sweet
As the milk of the wheat,
And plainer and purer,
And richer and surer,
Than all the wild thrushes
That bawl in the bushes,
Both magical, mellow, and meet;
For, when I am near
In the spring of the year,
And warble both over and under,
For envy all cease,
The valleys have peace,
And nature is struck with a wonder;
All suffer my praises and sing to my law,
The linnets, and thrushes, the dove, and the daw.
Caw! Caw! Caw!
What though I am scorned,
And hunted and horned
From bushes and bowers,
And tree-tops and towers,
And banned for a season
From right and from reason,
And warred on with pilfering powers!
Thus monarchs must suffer
For smoother or rougher,
And gather some thorns with their flowers.
Howbeit the swain
Still scatters my grain,
And heralds my note with a flourish,
And, while my compeers
Want berries and ears,
I fatten and feed till they perish.
In summer, and autumn, in frost, and in thaw,
Earth scatters and litters some food for my maw,
For I am the king, and all else is my law.
Caw! Caw! Caw!
Title photography by Richard Bradshaw
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