Classic Poem

Sunset is golden on the steep,
And all our little valleys lie
Golden and still and full of sleep
To watch the flocks go by.
Down through the winding leaf-hung lane,
Now blurred in shade, now bright again,
They trail in splendor, aureoled
And mystical in clouded gold.

As insubstantial as a dream
They huddle homeward past my door . . .
From what Theocritean stream,
Or what Thessalian shore?
An ancient air surrounds them still,
As though from some Arcadian hill
They shuffled through the afterglow
Across the fields of long ago.

Is this the flock Apollo kept
From straying by his reed-soft tunes
While the long ilex shadow crept
Through ancient afternoons?
In some dim legendary wood,
Ages ago, have they not stood
Wondering, circle-wise and mute,
Round some remote Sicilian flute?

I think that they have gazed across
The dazzle of Ionian seas
From the green capes of Tenedos
Or wave-washed Cyclades,
And wandered through the twilight down
The hills that gird some Attic town
Dim-shining in the purple gloam
Beside the whispering of pale foam.

What dream is this? I know the croft,
Deep in this vale, where they were born;
I know their wind-swept fields aloft
Among the waving corn.
Yet, while they glimmer slowly by,
A fairer earth and earlier sky
Seem round them, and they move sublime
Among the dews of dawning time.