Night Is On The Downland

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