Louis MacNeice

The Junes were free and full, driving through
Roads, the mudguards brushing the cowparsley,
Through fields of mustard and under boldly
Mays and

Forty-two years ago (to me if to no one
The number is of some interest) it was a brilliant starry
And the westward train was empty and had no
So darting from side to side I could catch the unwonted

A spiral of green hay on the end of a rake:
The moment is sweat and sun-prick---children and old women Big in a tiny field, midgets against the mountain,
So toy-like yet so purposed you could take This for the Middle Ages

Down the road someone is practising scales,
The notes like little fishes vanish with a wink of tails,
Man's heart expands to tinker with his car For this is Sunday morning,
Fate's great bazaar;

Well,
I dreamt it was a hot day, the territorials Were out on melting asphalt under the howitzers,
The brass music bounced on the houses
Come I heard cry as it were a water-nymph, come and fulfil me And I sped floating, my feet plas...

Only let it form within his hands once more - The moment cradled like a brandy glass
Sitting alone in the empty dining hall… From the chandeliers the snow begins to fall Piling around carafes and table legs And chokes the passage of the revol...

I am not yet born;
O hear me
Let not the bloodsucking bat or the rat or the stoat or theclub-footed ghoul come near me
I am not yet born, console me

Indoors the tang of a tiny oil lamp
The winking signal on the waste of sea
Indoors the sound of the wind
Outdoors the wind

In my childhood trees were green And there was plenty to be seen
Come back early or never come
My father made the walls resound,
He wore his collar the wrong way round

And this, ladies and gentlemen, whom I am not in fact Conducting, was his office all those minutes ago,
This man you never heard of
These are the bills In the intray, the ash in the ashtray, the grey memoranda stacked Against him, the se...

The room was suddenly rich and the great           bay-window
Spawning snow and pink roses against
Soundlessly collateral and incompatible:
World is suddener than we fancy it

The sunlight on the
Hardens and grows cold,
We cannot cage the
Within its nets of gold;