The Herd

The roaming sheep, forbidden to roam far,     Were stayed within the shadow of his eye.     The sheep-dog on that unseen shadow's edge     Moved, halted, barked, while the tall shepherd stood     Unmoving, leaned upon a sarsen stone,     Looking at the rain that curtained the bare hills     And drew the smoking curtain near and near! -     Tawny, bush-faced, with cloak and staff, and flask     And bright brass-ribb'd umbrella, standing stone     Against the veinless, senseless sarsen stone.     The Roman Road hard by, the green Ridge Way,     Not older seemed, nor calmer the long barrows     Of bones and memories of ancient days     Than the tall shepherd with his craft of days     Older than Roman or the oldest caveman,     When, in the generation of all living,     Sheep and kine flocked in the Aryan valley and     The first herd with his voice and skill of water     Fleetest of foot, led them into green pastures,     From perished pastures to new green. I saw     The herdsmen everywhere about the world,     And herdsmen of all time, fierce, lonely, wise,     Herds of Arabia and Syria     And Thessaly, and longer-winter'd climes;     And this lone herd, ages before England was,     Pelt-clad, and armed with flint-tipped ashen sap,     Watching his flocks, and those far flocks of stars     Slow moving as the heavenly shepherd willed     And at dawn shut into the sunny fold.