Have you heard those birds of the morning
That rise with the lark’s first flight?
Have you seen those birds of shadow
That pounce with the owl at night?
They swoop where hell is flaming,
They soar in heaven apart.
They fly with the swallow’s swiftness,
And fight with the eagle’s heart.
Have you seen their glinting feathers?
They are off to the Fields of Fate,
Where the flowers all wear scarlet,
And the rivers red are in spate.
To prick new names of glory
On valour’s ancient chart,
They fly with the swallow’s swiftness
And fight with the eagle’s heart.
Have you heard their thrumming music?
It drones to the cannon’s boom
And the wailing whizz of the shrapnel
Like an undersong of doom.
Wherever in loudest chorus
The deafening thunders start,
They fly with the swallow’s swiftness,
And fight with the eagle’s heart.
And though some of the first and fleetest
Have flown away to the west,
And sunk on the seas of twilight
With a wound in their shining breast,
The others know that, homing,
In the end all birds depart,
And they fly with the swallow’s swiftness,
And fight with the eagle’s heart.
Have you seen those birds of the morning
That rout the carrion crow?
Have you seen those birds of shadow
That pounce on the stoat below?
Till Hell recalls its legions,
And Death lays down his dart,
They’ll fly with the swallow’s swiftness,
And fight with the eagle’s heart.
1954
I have two gardens for my ease,
Where skies are warm and flowers please;
With skilful mastery each designed
Is fair and perfect of its kind.
In one the tulips every year
Flame April out and disappear;
And roses red that garland June
Are worn but for a summer’s noon.
It is a garden, flower and leaf,
Where lovely things are very brief.
Upon a wall my other grows,
And changes not for heat or snows.
Its tulips do not flaunt and die,
But, dreaming, watch the spring go by.
In pensive grey, like musing nuns,
They hold no commerce with the suns.
There leaves in order are outspread
Which ruffling winds shall never shed.
The roses are the magic blue
That in the faery gardens grew,
Not fashioned for themselves alone,
But for the common beauty grown.
They shall not wax, they shall not wane,
They shall not flush to fleet again,
But quaintly, in their quiet place,
Shall charm me with unaltered grace,
And fresh for ever, flower and shoot,
Shall spring from their eternal root.
1954