How all the roads creep in.
This place has grown so narrow,
You could not swing a javelin,
And if you shot an arrow,
It would skim this meagre mountain wall
And in some other country
Like a lost meteor fall.
When first this company
Took root here no one knows,
For nothing comes and goes
But the bleak mountain wind,
That so our blood has thinned
And sharpened so our faces—
Unanswerably grave
As long-forsaken places—
They have lost all look of hate or love
And keep but what they have.
The cloud has drawn so close,
This small much-trodden mound
Must, must be very high
And no road goes by.
The parsimonious ground
That at its best will bear
A few thin blades as fine as hair
Can anywhere be found,
Yet is so proud and niggardly
And envious, it will trust
Only one little wild half-leafless tree
To straggle from the dust.
Yet under it we sometimes feel such ease
As if it were ten thousand trees
And for its foliage had
Robbed half the world of shade.
All the woods in grief
Bowed down by leaf and bird and leaf
From all their branches could not weep
A sleep such as that sleep.
Sleep underneath the tree.
It is your murdering eyes that make
The sterile hill, the standing lake,
And the leaf-breaking wind.
Then shut your eyes and see,
Sleep on and do not wake
Till there is movement in the lake,
And the club-headed water-serpents break
In emerald lightnings through the slime,
Making a mark on Time.