Night is on the downland, on the lonely moorland, <br />On the hills where the wind goes over sheep-bitten turf, <br />Where the bent grass beats upon the unplowed poorland <br />And the pine-woods roar like the surf. <br /> <br />Here the Roman lived on the wind-barren lonely, <br />Dark now and haunted by the moorland fowl; <br />None comes here now but the peewit only, <br />And moth-like death in the owl. <br /> <br />Beauty was here in on this beetle-droning downland; <br />The thought of a Caesar in the purple came <br />From the palace by the Tiber in the Roman townland <br />To this wind-swept hill with no name. <br /> <br />Lonely Beauty came here and was here in sadness, <br />Brave as a thought on the frontier of the mind, <br />In the camp of the wild upon the march of madness, <br />The bright-eyed Queen of the Blind. <br /> <br />Now where Beauty was are the wind-withered gorses, <br />Moaning like old men in the hill-wind's blast; <br />The flying sky is dark with running horses, <br />And the night is full of the past.<br /><br />John Masefield<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/night-is-on-the-downland/
