Come, sweet ones, come to the fields with me, 
I hear the hum of the honey bee, 
I hear the call of the gray cuckoo, 
I hear the note of the shrill curlew; 
I hear the cry of the hunting hawk,
The sound of the dove in our 'custom'd walk, 
The song of the lark, the tongue of the rill. 
The shepherds' shout on the pasture hill. 

My sweet ones, all come forth and play. 
The air is balm, and I smell new hay; 
Come, breathe of the flowers, and see how neat 
The milkmaid trips on her scented feet; 
Young folks come forth all joy, and run 
Abroad as bright as beams of the sun; 
Old men stop out with a sadder grace,
And matrons come with a graver pace. 

The smoke streams up, and the air is rife 
With joy, and all is light and life; 
From east to west there's not a stain 
In all the sky, and the birds are fain,
And the beasts are glad, while man in song 
Breaks out, for rain has lorded long, 
And earth has drunk more than her need 
To fill her flowers and nurse her seed. 

Now, now ye come, my little ones all,
As the young doves come at their mothers' call; 
One run to yon tall foxglove, and see
At his breakfast of balm the golden bee;
Another go hunt from bud to bloom
The worm that flies with a painted plume,
Or see the doe solicitous lead
Her twin fawns forth to the odorous mead,
Or mark the nestlings newly flown,
With their tender wings and their crests of down. 

But stay, my children. Ere ye run, 
Who made the sky and yon glorious sun? 
Who framed the earth, and strewed it sweet 
With flowers, and set it 'neath mankind's feet? 
'Twas ONE in heaven. Kneel down, and lay 
Your white foreheads to the grass, and pray; 
And render him praise, and seek to be 
Pure, good, and modest — then come with me.

Small type of great ones, that do hum
Within this whole world's narrow room,
That with a busie hollow noise
Catch at the people's vainer voice,
And with spread sails play with their breath,
Whose very hails new christen death.
Poor Fly, caught in an airy net,
Thy wings have fetter'd now thy feet;
Where, like a Lyon in a toyl,
Howere thou keep'st a noble coyl,
And beat'st thy gen'rous breast, that o're
The plains thy fatal buzzes rore,
Till thy all-bellyd foe (round elf)
Hath quarter'd thee within himself.

Was it not better once to play
I' th' light of a majestick ray,
Where, though too neer and bold, the fire
Might sindge thy upper down attire,
And thou i' th' storm to loose an eye.
A wing, or a self-trapping thigh:
Yet hadst thou fal'n like him, whose coil
Made fishes in the sea to broyl,
When now th'ast scap'd the noble flame;
Trapp'd basely in a slimy frame,
And free of air, thou art become
Slave to the spawn of mud and lome?

Nor is't enough thy self do's dresse
To thy swoln lord a num'rous messe,
And by degrees thy thin veins bleed,
And piecemeal dost his poyson feed;
But now devour'd, art like to be
A net spun for thy familie,
And, straight expanded in the air,
Hang'st for thy issue too a snare.
Strange witty death and cruel ill
That, killing thee, thou thine dost kill!
Like pies, in whose entombed ark
All fowl crowd downward to a lark,
Thou art thine en'mies' sepulcher,
And in thee buriest, too, thine heir.

Yet Fates a glory have reserv'd
For one so highly hath deserv'd.
As the rhinoceros doth dy
Under his castle-enemy,
As through the cranes trunk throat doth speed,
The aspe doth on his feeder feed;
Fall yet triumphant in thy woe,
Bound with the entrails of thy foe.