To the World

You took the rare blue from my cloudy sky;

You shot the one bird in my silent wood;

You crushed my rose – one rose alone had I .

You have not known. You have not understood.

I would have shown you pictures I have seen

Of unimagined mountains, plains and seas;

I would have made you songs of leafy green,

If you had left me some small ecstasies ;

Now let the one dear field be only field,

That was a garden for the mighty gods,

Take you its corn, I keep its better yield –

The glory that I found within its clods.

The Collected Works of Mary Webb, Jonathan Cape,1929