The Horses
Edwin Muir

Barely a twelvemonth after
The seven days war that put the world to sleep,
Late in the evening the strange horses came.
By then we had made our covenant with silence,
But in the first few days it was so still
We listened to our breathing and were afraid.
On the second day
The radios failed; we turned the knobs; no answer.
On the third day a warship passed us, heading north,
Dead bodies piled on the deck. On the sixth day
A plane plunged over us into the sea. Thereafter
Nothing. The radios dumb;
And still they stand in corners of our kitchens,
And stand, perhaps, turned on, in a million rooms
All over the world. But now if they should speak,
If on a sudden they should speak again,
If on the stroke of noon a voice should speak,
We would not listen, we would not let it bring
That old bad world that swallowed its children quick
At one great gulp. We would not have it again.
Sometimes we think of the nations lying asleep,
Curled blindly in impenetrable sorrow,
And then the thought confounds us with its strangeness.
The tractors lie about our fields; at evening
They look like dank sea-monsters couched and waiting.
We leave them where they are and let them rust:
'They'll molder away and be like other loam.'
We make our oxen drag our rusty plows,
Long laid aside. We have gone back
Far past our fathers' land.
And then, that evening
Late in the summer the strange horses came.
We heard a distant tapping on the road,
A deepening drumming; it stopped, went on again
And at the corner changed to hollow thunder.
We saw the heads
Like a wild wave charging and were afraid.
We had sold our horses in our fathers' time
To buy new tractors. Now they were strange to us
As fabulous steeds set on an ancient shield.
Or illustrations in a book of knights.
We did not dare go near them. Yet they waited,
Stubborn and shy, as if they had been sent
By an old command to find our whereabouts
And that long-lost archaic companionship.
In the first moment we had never a thought
That they were creatures to be owned and used.
Among them were some half a dozen colts
Dropped in some wilderness of the broken world,
Yet new as if they had come from their own Eden.
Since then they have pulled our plows and borne our loads
But that free servitude still can pierce our hearts.
Our life is changed; their coming our beginning.                             

Past One O'clock...
Vladimir Mayakovsky

Past one o’clock. You must have gone to bed.
The Milky Way streams silver through the night.
I’m in no hurry; with lightning telegrams
I have no cause to wake or trouble you.
And, as they say, the incident is closed.
Love’s boat has smashed against the daily grind.
Now you and I are quits. Why bother then
To balance mutual sorrows, pains, and hurts.
Behold what quiet settles on the world.
Night wraps the sky in tribute from the stars.
In hours like these, one rises to address
The ages, history, and all creation.

I Meant to Do My Work Today
Richard LeGallienne

I meant to do my work today-
   But a brown bird sang in the apple-tree,
And a butterfly flitted across the field,
   And all the leaves were calling me.

And the wind went sighing over the land
   Tossing the grasses to and fro,
And a rainbow held out its shining hand-
  So what could I do but laugh and go?

An English Night
Felix Dennis

9:45 on a fine June night,
I watch from the window and write and write
As the fields are lit by the blood-eyed flight
Of the westering sun— as trees ignite,
And the shadows lance in the slanted light,
Each leaf a halo of fire, more bright
Than the pale moon clothed in mottle and white,
Awaiting the arms of her purple knight.

Little is moving in Eden this night:
The ears of an owl on his branchy height,
Or the plop of a frog as he sinks from sight,
As a martin blurs like a sickle kite
Of gunmetal grey… and I write and write
This hymn of delight in an English light.

Deliverance
mine

Run to the bridge, captain, swell's mountain high,
The wreckers are out, and I fear we shall die.
Steer us to safety, as only you can,
There's fear in the eyes now, of every man.
The cargo is shifting, we're starting to list,
We can't see the land for the rain and the mist.
Deliver us, captain, to some sheltered bay,
Neither tempest nor wreckers shall have us today.
Our children are waiting, our wives holding tight
To the hope that the storm will not take us, tonight.
To heaven we look and to God we will pray,
But our captain's the one saving souls here this day.

Autumn
Walter De La Mare

There is a wind where the rose was;
Cold rain where sweet grass was;
And clouds like sheep
Stream o'er the steep
Grey skies where the lark was.

Nought gold where your hair was;
Nought warm where your hand was;
But phantom, forlorn,
Beneath the thorn,
Your ghost where your face was.

Sad winds where your voice was;
Tears, tears where my heart was;
And ever with me,
Child, ever with me,
Silence where hope was.

Beauty
John Masefield

I have seen dawn and sunset on moors and windy hills
Coming in solemn beauty like slow old tunes of Spain:
I have seen the lady April bringing the daffodils,
Bringing the springing grass and the soft warm April rain.

I have heard the song of the blossoms and the old chant of the sea,
And seen strange lands from under the arched white sails of ships;
But the loveliest things of beauty God ever has showed to me
Are her voice, and her hair, and eyes, and the dear red curve of her lips.