February Afternoon + 

Men heard this roar of parleying starlings, saw, + 

A thousand years ago even as 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. + 