Eglimpse

A Poem

Photo by Megan Nevils

---

A hedge before me breaks in two
And I see amid something far
That wants to pull me through.
It's all that eye or mind can see 
For six or seven seconds,
And I think it's where I want to be--
A complete eglimpse through the shabbier nearness,
Perfectly filling the hedge-gap,
Which and all around it sat in drearness.

Think of what it might have shown: 
A wall, a fence, a road or cars,
Of what it might have hid and kept unknown,
And how I might instead have never seen
The far trees swaying from a distant breeze,
The sunlight making a happier green.
The birds of that country take their ease;
I watch them sport and turn,
And then at last their homely branches sieze.

As some unknowing have angels hosted,
So might some, like me, I think,
Have had the chance and of it boasted
To see them at their play
On bright leas unspoiled,
Through a hedge, in brief eglimpse, on a day.