Ambition + 

Unless it was that day I never knew + 

Ambition. After a night of frost, before + 

The March sun brightened and the South-west blew, + 

Jackdaws began to shout and float and soar + 

Already, and one was racing straight and high + 

Alone, shouting like a black warrior + 

Challenges and menaces to the wide sky. + 

With loud long laughter then a woodpecker + 

Ridiculed the sadness of the owl’s last cry. + 

And through the valley where all the folk astir + 

Made only plumes of pearly smoke to tower + 

Over dark trees and white meadows happier + 

Than was Elysium in that happy hour, + 

A train that roared along raised after it + 

And carried with it a motionless white bower + 

Of purest cloud, from end to end close-knit, + 

So fair it touched the roar with silence. Time + 

Was powerless while that lasted. I could sit + 

And think I had made the loveliness of prime, + 

Breathed its life into it and were its lord, + 

And no mind lived save this ’twixt clouds and rime. + 

Omnipotent I was, nor even deplored + 

That I did nothing. But the end fell like a bell: + 

The bower was scattered; far off the train roared. + 

But if this was ambition I cannot tell. + 

What ’twas ambition for I know not well. + 