Classic Poem

The narrow paths branch every way up here
And cross and tangle and are nowhere clear
And the empty sky, swept clean by a rainy breath,
Smiles on our tortuous scrambling underneath.
But here's the top, for round a sudden bend
We stumble breathless on the unlooked for end
And stare across the misty weald. Below
The lonely trains through the wide country go,
Each with its plume of steam. And westward, see,
Past the far shoulder streams tumultuously
A black and driven storm across the air
And casts about the downs its troubled hair.
Thick at the middle, at the edges thinned,
Heeling over like a ship before the wind,
It eats the weald up with a greedy mouth.
Still, twenty miles or further to the south,
Dimly and grandly Chanctonbury stands
A moment clear above the blotted lands.
It's gone. But still the blue and empty sky
Smiles on over our heads unwittingly.