Once the world's shepherds woke to lead
The folded sheep that they might feed
On green downs where winds blow.
One shepherd sang a golden word.
A thousand miles away one heard.
One sang it swift, one sang it slow.
Two skylarks heard, two skylarks told
All shepherds this same song of gold
On all downs where winds blow.
This is the song that shepherds must
Sing till the green downlands be dust
And tide of sheep-drift no more flow;
The song two skylarks told again
To all the sheep and shepherd men
On green downs where winds blow.
SKYLARK NOON
Now the tall sky
Is pricked with stars of song as the sky at night
With stars of light.
I am loosened, I fly
Till never a lark is near to the sun as I.
Now through the steeps of air do my swift wings cut.
My wings are seen and not seen
Even as dawn-drenched waters that twinkle and shut,
As I rise to the tops of the noon where no bird has been.
Fleet
My wings beat.
I climb, I climb
High hills of noon that soar from the plains of Time.
But lo!
As I go,
Half flame, half snow,
So far through unwinged places that even the brown
Larks of the dwindling down
Are as dust, and dimmer than dust are men and town—
Who are these, who are these
New larks whose song is so proud
That my own is cowed?
From what lands, what seas
Have they flown with song so kingly my weak songs fade;
Such song as no bird has made
Though Love called long in Spring and his heart obeyed?
Such song is theirs as the winds have always sought
But the winds not found;
Such song as the seas at dawn have almost caught
Ere the song was drowned;
Such song as no birds achieve,
Though nightingale may grieve,
And lyric thrush may scold,
And blackbird make so bold
As to declare this silver and his own song gold.
Who are these whose singings here
Compass the noon with splendour, but my heart with fear,
Lest I, unworth this height,
Drop through narrowing deeps of unplumbed night?
Lo! the dead poets they
Who passed through flesh this way,
These with no lips of clay
Now sing supremest song throughout the duskless day.
In the music now they make
My own few notes forsake
My heart that rocks in silence as a lone bird on a lake.
I vail within my wings
I vail my head in worship before the poet kings;
Until from the far brink
Of this last Song whence I shrink
Ah slowly now and slowly down the tall noon I sink.