February Afternoon
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EN heard this roar of parleying starlings, saw, A thousand years ago even as now, Black rooks with white gulls following the ploughSo that the first are last until a cawCommands that last are first again,--a law Which was of old when one, like me, dreamed how A thousand years might dust lie on his browYet thus would birds do between hedge and shaw. Time swims before me, making as a day A thousand years, while the broad ploughland oak Roars mill-like and men strike and bear the stroke Of war as ever, audacious or resigned,And God still sits aloft in the array That we have wrought him, stone-deaf and stone-blind.
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