Dust

On burning ploughlands, faintly blue with wheat,

A three-horse roller toils, the wandering dust

A nimbus round it. Shadow-coloured hills

Huddle beyond -- hump-shouldered, kingly-headed

Or eel-shaped; sinister, tortured -- waiting still,

Beneath the purposeful, secretive sky,

The multitudinous years

That soon or late will melt them.

So I have felt them

In all their static beauty only fit for tears,

Like those that toil along the blood-red weald

With their own death-dust round them for sole glory

Under the falcon wings

Of dawn, the red night's carrion-swoop,

The intolerable emptiness of air.

Long, long ago I thought on all these things:

Long, long ago I loved them.