Edwin Muir

The angel and the girl are
Earth was the only meeting place
For the embodied never
Travelled beyond the shore of space

All through that summer at ease we lay,
And daily from the turret
We watched the mowers in the
And the enemy half a mile

Boswell by my bed,
Tolstoy on my table;
Thought the world has bled For four and a half years,
And wives' and mothers' tears Collected would be able To water a little field Untouched by anger and blood,

Now the ice lays its smooth claws on the sill,
The sun looks from the
Helmed in his winter casket,
And sweeps his arctic sword across the sky

Unfriendly friendly universe,
I pack your stars into my purse,
And bid you so farewell
That I can leave you, quite go out,

O Merlin in your crystal
Deep in the diamond of the day,
Will there ever be a
Whose music will smooth

They do not live in the world,
Are not in time and space
From birth to death hurled No word do they have, not one To plant a foot upon,
Were never in any place

I've been in love for
With what I cannot
And will contrive a
For the

'MY life is done, yet all remains,
The breath has gone, the image not,
The furious shapes once forged in
Live on though now no longer hot

Those lumbering horses in the steady plough,
On the bare field - I wonder, why, just now,
They seemed terrible, so wild and strange,
Like magic power on the stony grange

I've been in love for
With what I cannot
And will contrive a
For the

We were a tribe, a family, a people
Wallace and Bruce guard now a painted field,
And all may read the folio of our fable,
Peruse the sword, the sceptre and the shield