Classic Poem

The mist creeps up from the long canal
Over the fields, and the colour fades
From the smoke in the sky,
And fades from the crimson sunset.

On the wet grass
Men and young women playing
Hush, and their rarer shouts
Break into the silence.

Beyond a feathery row of leafless poplars
The road lies,
And the swift lights of the tramcars
Leap in patterns
From tree to tree.

Suddenly
A roar from ten thousand throats,
A hidden army of men,
Bursts the calm of the universe;
And the world reels and sinks,
And the lights of the tramcars
Change into constellations —
Plough and Scorpion and Cassiopeia —
That change again as the world sinks
Farther and farther and the firmament
Whirls its myriad lamps
Through the eternal, infinite darkness.