Upon your held-out hand
Count the endless days until they end,
Feel, as the pulse grows tired,
The angels’ wings beating about your head
Unsounding, they beat so soft.
Why count so sadly?
Learn to be merry with the merriest,
Or (change the key!) give vent to utterances
As meaningless as the bells (oh change the life!),
The sideboard fruit, the ferns, the picture houses
And the pack of cards.

When I was seven I counted four and forty trees
That stood before my window,
Which may or may not be relevant
And symbolise the maddening factors
That madden both watchers and actors.
I’ve said my piece: count or go mad.
The new asylum on the hill
Leers down the valley like a fool
Waiting and watching for your fingers to fail
To keep count of the stiles
The thousand sheep
Leap over to my criss-cross rhythms.
I’ve said my piece.

I have wandered where the cuckoo fills
The woodlands with her magic voice:
I have wandered on the brows of hills
Where the last heavenward larks rejoice:
Far I have wandered by the wave,
By shadowy loch and swaying stream,
But never have I found the grave
Of him who made me a wandering Dream.
If I could find that lonely place
And him who lies asleep therein,
I'd bow my head and kiss his face
And sleep and rest and peace would win.

He made me, he who lies asleep
Hidden in some forgotten spot
Where winds sweep and rains weep
And foot of wayfarer cometh not:
He made me, Merlin, ages ago,
He shaped me in an idle hour,
He made a heart of fire to glow
And hid it in an April shower!
For I am but a shower that calls
A thin sweet song of rain, and pass:
Even the wind-whirled leaf that falls
Lingers awhile within the grass,
But I am blown from hill to vale,
From vale to hill like a bird's cry
That shepherds hear a far-off wail
And woodfolk as a drowsy sigh.

And I am tired, whom Merlin made.
I would lie down in the heart of June
And fall asleep in a leafy shade
And wake not till in the Faery Moon
Merlin shall rise our lord and king,
To leave for aye the tribes of Man,
And let the clarion summons ring
The kingdom of the Immortal Clan.
If but in some green place I'd see
An ancient tangled moss-like beard
And half-buried boulder of a knee
I should not flutter away afeared!
With leap of joy, with low glad cry
I'd sink beside the Sleeper fair:
He would not grudge my fading sigh
In the ancient stillness brooding there.