Past seven o'clock: time to be gone; <br />Twelfth-night's over and dawn shivering up: <br />A hasty cut of the loaf, a steaming cup, <br />Down to the door, and there is Coachman John. <br /> <br />Ruddy of cheek is John and bright of eye; <br />But John it appears has none of your grins and winks; <br />Civil enough, but short: perhaps he thinks: <br />Words come once in a mile, and always dry. <br /> <br />Has he a mind or not? I wonder; but soon <br />We turn through a leafless wood, and there to the right, <br />Like a sun bewitched in alien realms of night, <br />Mellow and yellow and rounded hangs the moon. <br /> <br />Strangely near she seems, and terribly great: <br />The world is dead: why are we travelling still? <br />Nightmare silence grips my struggling will; <br />We are driving for ever and ever to find a gate. <br /> <br />'When you come to consider the moon,' says John at last, <br />And stops, to feel his footing and take his stand; <br />'And then there's some will say there's never a hand <br />That made the world!' <br />A flick, and the gates are passed. <br /> <br />Out of the dim magical moonlit park, <br />Out to the workday road and wider skies: <br />There's a warm flush in the East where day's to rise, <br />And I'm feeling the better for Coachman John's remark.<br /><br />Sir Henry Newbolt<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/moonset-4/
