Hold hard, these ancient minutes in the cuckoo’s month,
Under the lank, fourth folly on Glamorgan’s hill,
As the green blooms ride upward, to the drive of time;
Time, in a folly’s rider, like a county man
Over the vault of ridings with his hound at heel,
Drives forth my men, my children, from the hanging south.

Country, your sport is summer, and December’s pools
By crane and water-tower by the seedy trees
Lie this fifth month unskated, and the birds have flown;
Hold hard, my country children in the world of tales,
The greenwood dying as the deer fall in their tracks,
This first and steepled season, to the summer’s game.

And now the horns of England, in the sound of shape,
Summon your snowy horsemen, and the four-stringed hill,
Over the sea-gut loudening, sets a rock alive;
Hurdles and guns and railings, as the boulders heave,
Crack like a spring in a vice, bone breaking April,
Spill the lank folly’s hunter and the hard-held hope.

Down fall four padding weathers on the scarlet lands,
Stalking my children’s faces with a tail of blood,
Time, in a rider rising, from the harnessed valley;
Hold hard, my county darlings, for a hawk descends,
Golden Glamorgan straightens, to the falling birds.
Your sport is summer as the spring runs angrily.

Down through the blue-grass, running in long billows,
Heaped by the west wind, past the Lattimore,
Bordered by cattails, by the green willows,
Under a sky where white clouds soar;
Down to the pasture pond, by the lush morasses,
Beyond the nodding clover—
Then suddenly a cry, a flutter from the grasses—
Upsprings the startled plover,
Crying "kildeer," "kildeer," with wings interweaving,
Making parentheses against the open sky,
Voice of the June hours, for the April grieving,
Soaring and dipping, lost to the eye

Fellow to the winds, and to the green flags kindred,
Messenger of the prairie, and spirit of the hills,
Lost in the levels, hastening unhindered,
Soul of the landscape, heart that mourns and trills.
What a lonely melody, speaking the pioneer,
Winged grief that startles, and dies far away;
When his wings have vanished still you hear "kildeer"
Over dimming acres where the sky is gray.