Classic Poem

The cows are in the long byre, low, half-dark.
Now that it is twilight, let us roam
Past the white farm where the dog must bark,
Over mud to fetch milk home.

The byre is like a church, dim, melancholy,
With low windows gleaming like painted glass.
Over uneven brickways slowly,
Watched by the solemn black cow, we pass.
Her horns gleam; her tall haunches slope and fall
Curving to her neck; her lazy limbs
Droop, and she chews, while her halter swings.
That large man far away by the end wall
Is milking the white cow: all the time he sings,
Esoteric canticles and farmyard hymns.

Half-a-dozen boys and girls, laughing together,
Lean on the barn-wall waiting for milk.
The hawthorn-bearded ploughman is grumbling at the weather.
The milk is softly falling with a sound like moving silk.

Gloomy philosophers; great grim cows,
Chewing and ruminating all in a row:
Wise stupid creatures with haughty brows,
What kind of thing are they pretending to know?


Now the sound of pouring droops, fails.
There's a clatter of pails,
A movement of haunches, a rolling of eyes.
Some of the cows doze; some of them rise.

A joke is cracked: everybody smiles.
We pay for our milk; we take our little can;
We murmur good-night to the pink-faced man:
We wander through evening home quiet two miles.