Happiness (Powerful Poetry)

This poem is a quiet yet profound reminder that happiness doesn’t always arrive with celebration or ceremony. Instead, it often lives in life’s simplest moments—watching a sunset, feeling the wind brush against your face, or hearing birdsong. Freeman invites us to pay attention to these fleeting sensations, to be fully present as they happen. On a deeper level, the poem is a meditation on impermanence. Like the wind or the song of a bird, joy is transient. But that’s what makes it beautiful. The poem gently urges us to embrace these small gifts as they come, not to grasp or chase them, but to simply be with them, moment by moment.

Transcript

I have found happiness who looked not for it.

There was a green fresh hedge,

And willows by the riverside,

And whistling sedge.

The heaviness I felt was all around,

No joy sang in the wind,

Only dull slow life everywhere,

And in my mind.

Then from the sedge a bird cried,

And all changed.

Heaviness turned to mirth.

The willows the stream's cheek caressed,

The sun,

The earth.

What was it in the bird's song Worked such change?

The grass was wonderful.

I did not dream such beauty was In things so dull.

What was it in the bird's song Gave the water that living,

Sentient look?

Lent the rare brightness to the hedge.

That sweetness shook.

Down on the green path by the running water,

Or the small daisies lit,

With light of the white northern stars,

In dark skies set.

What was it made the whole world marvellous?

Mere common things were joys.

The cloud running upon the grass,

Children's faint noise.

The trees that grow straight up and stretch wide arms,

The snow heaped in the skies,

The light falling so simply on all,

My lifted eyes.

That all this startling,

Aching beauty saw,

I felt the sharp excess Of joy like the strong sun at noon,

Insupportable bliss.