Tides. Drinkwater John

home. I hear the rickyard fill

      With gossip as in generations gone,

      While wagon follows wagon from the hill.

      I think how, when our seasons all are sealed,

      Shall come the unchanging harvest from the field.

      I see the barns and comely manors planned

      By men who somehow moved in comely thought,

      Who, with a simple shippon to their hand,

      As men upon some godlike business wrought;

      I see the little cottages that keep

      Their beauty still where since Plantaganet

      Have come the shepherds happily to sleep,

      Finding the loaves and cups of cider set;

      I see the twisted shepherds, brown and old,

      Driving at dusk their glimmering sheep to fold.

      And now the valleys that upon the sun

      Broke from their opal veils, are veiled again,

      And the last light upon the wolds is done,

      And silence falls on flocks and fields and men;

      And black upon the night I watch my hill,

      And the stars shine, and there an owly wing

      Brushes the night, and all again is still,