Thomas Moult. Here for a Time. Harriet Monroe, ed. Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. 1912-22

Verse > Anthologies > Harriet Monroe, ed. > Poetry: A Magazine of Verse, 1912–22

CONTENTS · BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. 1912–22.

Here for a Time

By Thomas Moult


WITH the lone hills of sheep,
Stone-scarred and gray,
And the lone bleat;
With the brown old sleeping meres that meet
The storm’s sweep,	5
The sun’s sway
And the stars, and all the seasons, with unaltering face;
With the moor-mists swifting
As they have swifted
Down the slow dayfall since the ancient days;	10
With the sound of the last curlew drifting
As it has drifted
To the nestward beat
Of tired innumerable wings:

With these most solitary things,	15
These pitilessly aloof
In their harsh loneliness,
These pitifully weak
Against the stress
Of the eternal rebuff,	20
Here, for a little span
On their illimitable bleak,
Abides the warm memory
Of man.
Here, for a time, a breath of time, he brings	25
Faiths groping past the hills, and visionings;
Faiths and visionings great and sure
As the calm of the moor.
With feeble scratchings has he made his mark
On the hill’s steep;	30
For a day and a dark
They endure,
By a dark they outlast his laughter and tears,
His song.
The feeble scratchings he has traced along	35
By the hill’s feet
Fainter as they uplight to the farmost crest
And the cloud-veils,
Outliving by a dark
The faiths and fears	40
Of his breast,
And the visionings—
By these he has made his mark.

With the lone hills of sheep
Overspreading his eyes, and on his ears	45
The lone bleat,
He sinks into sleep.
Deep
As the deep of dales
Is his sleep;	50
More deep
Than the brown old sleep of meres that meet
The storm’s sweep,
The sun’s sway,
And the stars, and all the seasons, with unaltering face.	55

He dreams: in his dream he passes not away.
He endures even as they
These most solitary things,
These pitilessly aloof
In their harsh loneliness,	60
These pitifully weak
Against the stress
Of the eternal rebuff:
The lone hills, stone-scarred and gray,
The storm’s sweep,	65
The stars, and the sun’s sway;
The moor-mists swifting
As they have swifted
Down the slow dayfall since the ancient days;
The sound of the last curlew drifting	70
As it has drifted
To the nestward beat of tired innumerable wings.

CONTENTS · BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

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