Moonset

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