Men heard this roar of parleying starlings, saw, A thousand years ago even as now, Black rooks with white gulls following the plough So that the first are last until a caw Commands that last are first again, -- a law Which was old when one, like me, dreamed how A thousand years might dust lie on his brow Yet thus would birds do between hedge and shaw. Time swims before me, making as a day A thousand years, while the broad ploughland oak Roars mill-like and men strike and bear the stroke Of war as ever, audacious or resigned, And God still sits aloft in the array That we have wrought him, stone-deaf and stone-blind. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...CONTRA MORTEM: THE FALL by HAYDEN CARRUTH MISSING THE BO IN THE HENHOUSE by HAYDEN CARRUTH PLEDGE by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON RETROSPECTION by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON SPRINGTIME by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON |