Chesil's Favourite Poetry

I am the daughter of Earth and Water,
   And the nursling of the Sky;

Such harmonious madness
    From my lips would flow
The world should listen then,
     as I am listening now!

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,

A wanderer is man from his birth.

To sit on rocks, to muse o'er flood and fell,

So, we'll go no more a roving

On Wenlock Edge the wood's in trouble;
His forest fleece the Wrekin heaves;

You are old, Father William the young man said,
'And your hair has become very white;
And yet you incessantly stand on your head--
Do you think, at your age, it is right?'

He clasps the crag with crookèd hands;

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
   Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
   And the mome raths outgrabe.

What though while the wonders of nature exploring,
I cannot your light, mazy footsteps attend;

Every day is a fresh beginning,
Listen my soul to the glad refrain.

It is the hour when from the boughs
   The nightingale's high note is heard--

My luve is like a red, red rose,
That's newly sprung in June:

I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,