Classic Poem

Nothing is here but sedge-cut skies,
Azure of darting dragon-flies
And horse-flies settling on my flesh
Soft as the touch of spider's mesh.

A plunging pike rocks with a wave
The white-spoked nenuphars that pave
With smooth round leaves the loose-mired lode
That through the fen drives its straight road.

And as the wind blows back the stream
Shaking the buckthorns from their dream,
Time flows back here at Wicken Fen
To swine-steads and blue-woaded men,

Small shaggy men that plunge again
Through sedge and the black rotting rain;
And I too shudder as I feel
The whole earth shake under my heel.