The Last Poems Of Richard Watson Dixon. PREFACE. Hundreds of years hence, if but one song were left out of the many songs of every poet who has made our age musical, which of them all would be thought the sweetest how would they compare with the songs of an earlier generation It mould be hard to find among the lyrics of our own time or indeed of Shelleys one more exquisite than this The feathers of the willow Are half of them grown yellow Above the slelling stream And ragged are the bushes, And rusty now the rushes, And wild the clouded glean. The thistle now is older, His stalk begins to moulder, His head is white as snow the branches all are barer, The linnets song is rarer, The robin pipeth gone. Among the many woods and forests of Victoriansday, among those of the great forest-lover, Wordsworth himself where shall we find a statelier forest than we find here, rise in their place the woods the trees have cast, Like earth to earth... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.