Classic Poem

Gold as the hair of fairy-story queens,
The ricks stand squarely in the weathered farm.
There the first star on still September eves
Stabs through pure waters of the sky, to shine
On their grave foreheads. Round their bases broad,
Brisk-gallivanting cocks and hens proclaim:
‘Look! Look! Our ricks!’ and of the long-roofed barns
(Darkening, majestical, where wagons sleep
Noble as Agamemnon's chariot), ‘Look!
Look!’ they say, ‘our barns! What barns! Look! Look!’

And there, across the gate, the old white horse
(Hooved like Leviathan, sea-monster-lipped)
Bestirs himself and answers: ‘Hens know less
Than the blue-bottles on my morning nose.
For all the world, the farm, the dung, the grass,
The fields of bean and corn, the far-off church,
The reeds, the dykes, the ever-breaking sea,
The thistly dunes, and I myself, belong
To the sky only: because only sky
Covers us all for ever, as the ground
Covers the dead.’ He moves as though before
Man sliced the vast of time in fretful hours;
And the wide sky on the old farm looks down.

Mellow, grey-red, those bricks the pear-tree holds
With strong round stem. His topmost leaves are friends
With the paint-faded window-sill; they see
All happenings of the hidden shadowed room;
They know at midnight how the cold moon throws
Slabs of eternity across the quilt,
The jug, and breathing mounds that will be men
When unborn morrow breaks. They peep and know
How of its baptism, still the white quilt keeps
A frugal faint remembrance through the day.
Mellow, grey-red, the tiles of the old roof.
They have drunk in all the September suns,
All the grey-growing eves when lovers strayed
And browsing sheep cared not that they had kissed,
Or, raising heads, indifferently knew
That this was wise and usual, like the birds
Finding invisible pathways through the air,
Or as the sea that sounds for ever there.

So, as it darkens, leave the farm to rest,
My lingering thoughts, in quiet on the plain.
There autumn winds grow cold, and by the gate
A scythe hangs waiting in a sycamore tree.
But not a man who heaves along the road
In corduroys, cares what the shadows hide.
For country people know, though they have not read,
And need no emblem of mortality.
The lichen on the grave-stones and the roofs,
November sleet, the smell of the church aisle
Speak without words, and in their hearts they hear:
Sceptre and crown must tumble down, these say,
And come at last in the cold, earthen clay
To equal the poor crooked scythe and spade.

Nor, if they have finished work, are they afraid.