February Afternoon

Men heard this roar of parleying starlings, saw,
    A thousand years ago even as of now,
    Black rooks with white gulls following the plough
So that the first are last until a caw
Commands 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 brow
Yet 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.

--Edward Thomas