>Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
>
>Is hung with bloom along the bough,
>
>And stands about the woodland ride
>
>Wearing white for Eastertide.
>
>Now, of my threescore years and ten,
>
>Twenty will not come again,
>
>And take from seventy springs a score,
>
>It only leaves me fifty more.
>
>And since to look at things in bloom
>
>Fifty springs are little room,
>
>About the woodlands I will go
>
>To see the cherry hung with snow.
“Now hollow fires burn out to black
And lights are guttering low:
Square your shoulders, lift your pack,
And leave your friends and go.
Oh never fear, man, nought’s to dread,
Look not left nor right:
In all the endless road you tread
There’s nothing but the night.”
This was at the beginning of a novel I just read called “Nothing but the Night” by one of my favorite authors John Williams.
On moonlit heath and lonesome bank
The sheep beside me graze;
And yon the gallows used to clank
Fast by the four cross ways.
.
A careless shepherd once would keep
The flocks by moonlight there,
And high amongst the glimmering sheep
The dead man stood on air.
.
They hang us now in Shrewsbury jail:
The whistles blow forlorn,
And trains all night groan on the rail
To men that die at morn.
.
There sleeps in Shrewsbury jail to-night,
Or wakes, as may betide,
A better lad, if things went right,
Than most that sleep outside.
.
And naked to the hangman's noose
The morning clocks will ring
A neck God made for other use
Than strangling in a string.
.
And sharp the link of life will snap,
And dead on air will stand
Heels that held up as straight a chap
As treads upon the land.
.
So here I'll watch the night and wait
To see the morning shine,
When he will hear the stroke of eight
And not the stroke of nine;
.
And wish my friend as sound a sleep
As lads' I did not know,
That shepherded the moonlit sheep
A hundred years ago.
..
n.b. hanging in chains was called keeping sheep by moonlight.
Now hollow fires burn out to black,
And lights are guttering low:
Square your shoulders, lift your pack,
And leave your friends and go.
.
Oh never fear, man, nought's to dread,
Look not left nor right:
In all the endless road you tread
There's nothing but the night.
