There was no sound between those breathless hills. Only the dim Sun hung there, nothing moved; The thronged, massed, crowded multitude of leaves Hung like dumb tongues that loll and gasp for air: The grass was thick and still, between the trees. There were big apples lying on the ground, Shining, quite still, as though they had been stunned By some great violent spirit stalking through, Leaving a deep and supernatural calm Round a dead beetle upturned in a furrow. A valley filled with dark, quiet, leaf-thick trees, Loaded with green, cold, faintly shining suns; And in the sky a great dim burning disc!-- Madness it is to watch these twisted trunks And to see nothing move and hear no sound! Let's make a noise, Hey!... Hey!... Hullo! Hullo! KENT IN WAR The pebbly brook is cold to-night, Its water soft as air, A clear, cold, crystal-bodied wind Shadowless and bare, Leaping and running in this world Where dark-horned cattle stare: Where dark-horned cattle stare, hoof-firm On the dark pavements of the sky, And trees are mummies swathed in sleep And small dark hills crowd wearily; Soft multitudes of snow-grey clouds Without a sound march by. Down at the bottom of the road I smell the woody damp Of that cold spirit in the grass, And leave my hill-top camp-- Its long gun pointing in the sky-- And take the Moon for lamp. I stop beside the bright cold glint Of that thin spirit in the grass, So gay it is, so innocent! I watch its sparkling footsteps pass Lightly from smooth round stone to stone, Hid in the dew-hung grass. My lamp shines in the globes of dew, And leaps into that crystal wind Running along the shaken grass To each dark hole that it can find-- The crystal wind, the Moon my lamp, Have vanished in a wood that's blind. High lies my small, my shadowy camp, Crowded about by small dark hills; With sudden small white flowers the sky Above the woods' dark greenness fills; And hosts of dark-browed, muttering trees In trance the white Moon stills. I move among their tall grey forms, A thin moon-glimmering, wandering Ghost, Who takes his lantern through the world In search of life that he has lost, While watching by that long lean gun Up on his small hill post. TALKING WITH SOLDIERS The mind of the people is like mud, From which arise strange and beautiful things, But mud is none the less mud, Though it bear orchids and prophesying Kings, Dreams, trees, and water's bright babblings. It has found form and colour and light, The cold glimmer of the ice-wrapped Poles; It has called a far-off glow Arcturus, And some pale weeds, lilies of the valley. It has imagined Virgil, Helen and Cassandra; The sack of Troy, and the weeping for Hector-- Rearing stark up 'mid all this beauty In the thick, dull neck of Ajax. There is a dark Pine in Lapland, And the great, figured Horn of the Reindeer, Moving soundlessly across the snow, Is its twin brother, double-dreamed, In the mind of a far-off people.