Letter From Town: On A Grey Evening In March

THE clouds are pushing in grey reluctance slowly northward to you, / While north of them all, at the farthest ends, stands one bright-bosomed, aglance / With fire as it guards the wild north cloud-coasts, red-fire seas running through / The rocks where ravens flying to windward melt as a well-shot lance.

You should be out by the orchard, where violets secretly darken the earth, / Or there in the woods of the twilight, with northern wind-flowers shaken astir. / Think of me here in the library, trying and trying a song that is worth / Tears and swords to my heart, arrows no armour will turn or deter.

You tell me the lambs have come, they lie like daisies white in the grass / Of the dark-green hills; new calves in shed; peewits turn after the plough-- / It is well for you. For me the navvies work in the road where I pass / And I want to smite in anger the barren rock of each waterless brow.

Like the sough of a wind that is caught up high in the mesh of the budding trees, / A sudden car goes sweeping past, and I strain my soul to hear / The voice of the furtive triumphant engine as it rushes past like a breeze, / To hear on its mocking triumphance unwitting the after-echo of fear.