A Lonely Place

The leafless trees, the untidy stack         Last rainy summer raised in haste,     Watch the sky turn from fair to black         And watch the river fill and waste;     But never a footstep comes to trouble         The sea-gulls in the new-sown corn,     Or pigeons rising from late stubble         And flashing lighter as they turn.     Or if a footstep comes, 'tis mine         Sharp on the road or soft on grass:     Silence divides along my line         And shuts behind me as I pass.     No other comes, no labourer         To cut his shaggy truss of hay,     Along the road no traveller,         Day after day, day after day.     And even I, when I come here,         Move softly on, subdued and still,     Lonely as death, though I can hear         Men shouting on the other hill.     Day after day, though no one sees,         The lonely place no different seems;     The trees, the stack, still images         Constant in who can say whose dreams?