Stephen Spender

On the first summer day I lay in the valley.
Above rocks the sky sealed my eyes with a
The grass licked my skin.
The flowers bound my

He will watch the hawk with an indifferent eye Or pitifully;
Nor on those eagles that so feared him, now Will strain his brow;
Weapons men use, stone, sling and strong-thewed bow He will not know.
This aristocrat, superb of all…

Sometimes, apart in sleep, by chance,
You fall out of my arms, alone,
Into the chaos of your separate trance.
My eyes gaze through your forehead, through the bone

More beautiful and soft than any
With burring furred antennae feeling its huge
Through dusk, the air-liner with shut-off
Glides over suburbs and the sleeves set trailing

I stood on a roof top and they wove their
Their murmuring throbbing cage, in the air of blue crystal.
I saw them gleam above the town like diamond
Conjoining invisible struts of wire

The guns spell money's ultimate
In letters of lead on the spring hillside.
But the boy lying dead under the olive
Was too young and too

Shapes of death haunt life,
Neurosis eclipsing each in special shadow:
Unrequited love not
One’s need to become another’s

The secret of these hills was stone, and
Of that stone made,
And crumbling
That turned on sudden hidden

I think continually of those who were truly great.
Who, from the womb, remembered the soul's
Through corridors of light where the hours are
Endless and singing.

As a child holds a pet,
Arms clutching but with hands that do not join,
And the coiled animal watches the
To outer freedom in animal air,

A stopwatch and an ordnance map.
At five a man fell to the
And the watch flew off his
Like a moon struck from the

O night O trembling night O night of sighsO night when my body was a rod O
When my mouth was a vague animal
Pasturing on her flesh O
When the close darkness was a

Here are the ragged towers of
Stepped down the slope in terraces.
Through torn spaces between spearing
The lake glows with waters combed sideways

The light in the window seemed
When you stayed in the high room for me;
It glowed above the trees through
Like my certainty.