Classic Poem

He saw the sun, the Light-giver, step down behind the oak,
And send a tawny arrow-shaft along the engine-smoke.

He saw the last brown harvester lift up from mother earth
The sheaf that holds a mystery—the seed of death and birth;

And like a place in Paradise, the empty stubble-field
Waited, to watch the hock-cart go, with children she did yield.

He saw far-off the homing crows sail into mottled sky,—
Saw horse and horseman flag and tire, and trees like men go by.

He saw a woman close a door upon the warm fire-light,—
That, open, is the brow of day, and, closed, the shade of night.

He saw above the sallows the first lamps, lemon-hued,
Lead out the painted suburb into the hazel wood.

He saw the bob-tailed rabbits above the stoneman's pit
Where the years went, as the trains go, all unawares of it.

Another mile, the roofs begin; the rigid wilderness,
The smoke, the murky omens, upon his heart-beat press.

The night-reek of the townsfolk, the ferment of the place
Work like sharp ichor in his blood and strike him in the face.

But where the fields are fragrant, and where the town is passed,
There is a house, an open door; a face, a fire at last.

‘Three voices in a doorway,’ he says—‘a woman's form,
And a lighted hearth behind her can make a desert warm:

And what is Heaven but a house, like any other one,
Where the homing man finds harbour and the hundred roads are done?’

He saw the sun, the Light-giver, step down behind the oak,
And send a tawny arrow-shaft along the engine-smoke.

He saw the last brown harvester lift up from mother earth
The sheaf that holds a mystery—the seed of death and birth;

And like a place in Paradise, the empty stubble-field
Waited, to watch the hock-cart go, with children she did yield.

He saw far-off the homing crows sail into mottled sky,—
Saw horse and horseman flag and tire, and trees like men go by.

He saw a woman close a door upon the warm fire-light,—
That, open, is the brow of day, and, closed, the shade of night.

He saw above the sallows the first lamps, lemon-hued,
Lead out the painted suburb into the hazel wood.

He saw the bob-tailed rabbits above the stoneman's pit
Where the years went, as the trains go, all unawares of it.

Another mile, the roofs begin; the rigid wilderness,
The smoke, the murky omens, upon his heart-beat press.

The night-reek of the townsfolk, the ferment of the place
Work like sharp ichor in his blood and strike him in the face.

But where the fields are fragrant, and where the town is passed,
There is a house, an open door; a face, a fire at last.

‘Three voices in a doorway,’ he says—‘a woman's form,
And a lighted hearth behind her can make a desert warm:

And what is Heaven but a house, like any other one,
Where the homing man finds harbour and the hundred roads are done?’