Children of the Night

For a Book by Thomas Hardy

     With searching feet, through dark circuitous ways,
     I plunged and stumbled; round me, far and near,
     Quaint hordes of eyeless phantoms did appear,
     Twisting and turning in a bootless chase, —
     When, like an exile given by God's grace
     To feel once more a human atmosphere,
     I caught the world's first murmur, large and clear,
     Flung from a singing river's endless race.

     Then, through a magic twilight from below,
     I heard its grand sad song as in a dream:
     Life's wild infinity of mirth and woe
     It sang me; and, with many a changing gleam,
     Across the music of its onward flow
     I saw the cottage lights of Wessex beam.