Xxxvii. Epitaph On An Army Of Mercenaries

These, in the day when heaven was falling, The hour when earth's foundations fled, Followed their mercenary calling And took their wages and are dead.

Their shoulders held the sky suspended; They stood, and earth's foundations stay; What God abandoned, these defended, And saved the sum of things for pay.

XXXVIII.

Oh stay at home, my lad, and plough The land and not the sea, And leave the soldiers at their drill, And all about the idle hill Shepherd your sheep with me.

Oh stay with company and mirth And daylight and the air; Too full already is the grave Of fellows that were good and brave And died because they were.

XXXIX.

When summer's end is nighing And skies at evening cloud, I muse on change and fortune And all the feats I vowed When I was young and proud.

The weathercock at sunset Would lose the slanted ray, And I would climb the beacon That looked to Wales away And saw the last of day.

From hill and cloud and heaven The hues of evening died; Night welled through lane and hollow And hushed the countryside, But I had youth and pride.

And I with earth and nightfall In converse high would stand, Late, till the west was ashen And darkness hard at hand, And the eye lost the land.

The year might age, and cloudy The lessening day might close, But air of other summers Breathed from beyond the snows, And I had hope of those.

They came and were and are not And come no more anew; And all the years and seasons That ever can ensue Must now be worse and few.

So here's an end of roaming On eves when autumn nighs: The ear too fondly listens For summer's parting sighs, And then the heart replies.

XL.

Tell me not here, it needs not saying, What tune the enchantress plays In aftermaths of soft September Or under blanching mays, For she and I were long acquainted And I knew all her ways.

On russet floors, by waters idle, The pine lets fall its cone; The cuckoo shouts all day at nothing In leafy dells alone; And traveler's joy beguiles in autumn Hearts that have lost their own.

On acres of the seeded grasses The changing burnish heaves; Or marshalled under moons of harvest Stand still all night the sheaves; Or beeches strip in storms for winter And stain the wind with leaves.

Possess, as I possessed a season, The countries I resign, Where over elmy plains the highway Would mount the hills and shine, And full of shade the pillared forest Would murmur and be mine.

For nature, heartless, witless nature, Will neither care nor know What stranger's feet may find the meadow And trespass there and go, Nor ask amid the dews of morning If they are mine or no.