MOOD

This grave, unlabouring beauty of the dusk, Stars and still fields and swallows in the sky, These cool, damp odours faint with earthen musk, The fading sheep like ghosts of sheep gone by,— Have held so long the thought of brooding men, That something like a mood has gathered there, Piled deep and high, again and yet again, A moving, thoughtful presence on the air. So when the last light passes from the hill, Leaving these fields a glimmering grey and blue, And the last bell has sounded and grown still,— These blinking stars awake and tremble through, Re-blossomed from those gathering moods of time, Like brooding thoughts that flower into rhyme.

I have not known a quieter thing than ships, Nor any dreamers steeped in dream as these, For all that they have tracked disastrous seas, And winds that left their sails in flagging strips; Nothing disturbs them now, no stormy grips That once had hurt their sides, no crash or swell, Nor can the fretful harbour quite dispel This quiet that they learned on lonely trips. They have no part in all the noisy noons; They are become as dreams of ships that go Back to the secret waters that they know, Each as she will to unforgot lagoons, Where nothing moves except the ghostly spars That mark the patient watches on the stars.