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From Clee to heaven the beacon burns, The shires have seen it plain, From north and south the sign returns And beacons burn again. Look left, look right, the hills are bright, The dales are light between, Because 'tis fifty years to-night That God has saved the Queen. Now, when the flame they watch not towers About the soil they trod, Lads, we'll remember friends of ours Who shared the work with God. To skies that knit their heartstrings right, To fields that bred them brave, The saviours come not home to-night: Themselves they could not save. It dawns in Asia, tombstones show And Shropshire names are read; And the Nile spills his overflow Beside the Severn's dead. We pledge in peace by farm and town The Queen they served in war, And fire the beacons up and down The land they perished for. "God save the Queen" we living sing, From height to height 'tis heard; And with the rest your voices ring, Lads of the Fifty-third. Oh, God will save her, fear you not: Be you the men you've been, Get you the sons your fathers got, And God will save the Queen.

When I watch the living meet, And the moving pageant file Warm and breathing through the street Where I lodge a little while, If the heats of hate and lust In the house of flesh are strong, Let me mind the house of dust Where my sojourn shall be long. In the nation that is not Nothing stands that stood before; There revenges are forgot, And the hater hates no more; Lovers lying two and two Ask not whom they sleep beside, And the bridegroom all night through Never turns him to the bride.

The time you won your town the race We chaired you through the market-place; Man and boy stood cheering by, And home we brought you shoulder-high. To-day, the road all runners come, Shoulder-high we bring you home, And set you at your threshold down, Townsman of a stiller town. Smart lad, to slip betimes away From fields where glory does not stay And early though the laurel grows It withers quicker than the rose. Eyes the shady night has shut Cannot see the record cut, And silence sounds no worse than cheers After earth has stopped the ears: Now you will not swell the rout Of lads that wore their honours out, Runners whom renown outran And the name died before the man. So set, before its echoes fade, The fleet foot on the sill of shade, And hold to the low lintel up The still-defended challenge-cup. And round that early-laurelled head Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead, And find unwithered on its curls The garland briefer than a girl's.

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now Is hung with bloom along the bough, And stands about the woodland ride Wearing white for Eastertide. Now, of my threescore years and ten, Twenty will not come again, And take from seventy springs a score, It only leaves me fifty more. And since to look at things in bloom Fifty springs are little room, About the woodlands I will go To see the cherry hung with snow.

Along the field as we came by A year ago, my love and I, The aspen over stile and stone Was talking to itself alone. "Oh who are these that kiss and pass? A country lover and his lass; Two lovers looking to be wed; And time shall put them both to bed, But she shall lie with earth above, And he beside another love." And sure enough beneath the tree There walks another love with me, And overhead the aspen heaves Its rainy-sounding silver leaves; And I spell nothing in their stir, But now perhaps they speak to her, And plain for her to understand They talk about a time at hand When I shall sleep with clover clad, And she beside another lad.

On Wenlock Edge the wood's in trouble; His forest fleece the Wrekin heaves; The gale, it plies the saplings double, And thick on Severn snow the leaves. 'Twould blow like this through holt and hanger When Uricon the city stood: 'Tis the old wind in the old anger, But then it threshed another wood. Then, 'twas before my time, the Roman At yonder heaving hill would stare: The blood that warms an English yeoman, The thoughts that hurt him, they were there. There, like the wind through woods in riot, Through him the gale of life blew high; The tree of man was never quiet: Then 'twas the Roman, now 'tis I. The gale, it plies the saplings double, It blows so hard, 'twill soon be gone: To-day the Roman and his trouble Are ashes under Uricon.

On the idle hill of summer, Sleepy with the flow of streams, Far I hear the steady drummer Drumming like a noise in dreams. Far and near and low and louder On the roads of earth go by, Dear to friends and food for powder, Soldiers marching, all to die. East and west on fields forgotten Bleach the bones of comrades slain, Lovely lads and dead and rotten; None that go return again. Far the calling bugles hollo, High the screaming fife replies, Gay the files of scarlet follow: Woman bore me, I will rise.

Far in a western brookland That bred me long ago The poplars stand and tremble By pools I used to know. There, in the windless night-time, The wanderer, marvelling why, Halts on the bridge to hearken How soft the poplars sigh. He hears: long since forgotten In fields where I was known, Here I lie down in London And turn to rest alone. There, by the starlit fences, The wanderer halts and hears My soul that lingers sighing About the glimmering weirs.

I. I’m trying to spell out a state of amazement, A sweet dilation, the sway of spirit, That only finds room in your shape. They say that Transposed in our alphabet A Chinese sentence can turn into A series of one and the same conjunction. For instance: “And and. And and and. And and and and.” This is a genuine transcription of the beautiful poem “The Dance of the Yangtze River Valley And the Yangtze River.” II. Well, how many miracles, how many Chinese miracles, Have I missed this time? Too shrunk within the heart of Europe, Stuck to Greek reason, Spoiled by syllogism, And born too late for the Far East! III. No one gave me a silk scroll as a present At the time of the Han dynasty, Much less during the coming ones. My feet didn’t develop corns on the silk road, My shadow didn’t pass on the winding way To take the desert oases in its arms. I never wrapped my shoulders In the wavy mantle of the Yellow River. In 120 B.C. I didn’t show myself — idiot! — At the Music Chamber. What melodies I could have heard! My ear, a shell devoid of the sea’s roar, Missed the treasure of sounds Invading north to south. Would I have still remained With so many uncertainties? IV. I was late to the contest of impromptu poems And didn’t make libations to the Muse Along with Wang Xizhi. I wish I’d seen how they spelled “The literary spirit and the dragon engravings.” Humble observer, hidden in a fold of time, I wish I could participate unseen In the painting of the world’s first landscape. It would have included me no doubt As an accident on the horizon, A leaf on the sky’s water. I wish I’d been a judge when the names were checked Or, lazily lying in the Doctrine of the Great Vehicle, I wish I’d wandered beyond nature’s limits, And been struck by the sensation of a universal vacuum. V. I wonder if The five rice measures Would have finally revealed The vital principle. VI. Can’t you say anything, Beautifully written character? The Great Wall fits into you Like the moon in a cacoon. Open the silk door a moment And let this state of amazement in — Include this lotus flower In your closed-circuit breath. Why are you so silent, When you used to tell me about all these things?

It is not that you want to be the one to make prints in the untrampled snow It is that you want to be in the snow without having touched it to be of  the snow not beginning Everywhere commerce dictates the shapes that move you along that seat you at the table far from the snow far from the act of not touching It only gets worse A girl’s gotta eat And your hunger’s not even your own