In mottled fields, escaping every eye,
Till the foot stumbles over it, and the clump
Of quiet earth takes wing and whirrs away.
I saw him there, a strange and lonely soul,
An eagle in the Swan of Lichfield’s pen,
Stretching clipped wings and staring at the sky.
He saw the multitudinous hosts of life,
All creatures of the sea and earth and air,
Ascending from one living spiral thread,
Through tracts of time, unreckonable in years.