Poems by Edwin Muir

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The Horses

Barely a twelvemonth after

The seven days war that put the world to sleep,

Late in the evening the strange horses came.

By then we had made our covenant with silence,

But in the first few days it was so still

We listened to our breathing and were afraid.

On the second day

The radios failed; we turned the knobs; no answer.

119

by Edwin Muir

The Animals

They do not live in the world,

Are not in time and space.

From birth to death hurled

No word do they have, not one

To plant a foot upon,

Were never in any place.

For with names the world was called

Out of the empty air,

144

by Edwin Muir

The Combat

It was not meant for human eyes,

That combat on the shabby patch

Of clods and trampled turf that lies

Somewhere beneath the sodden skies

For eye of toad or adder to catch.

And having seen it I accuse

The crested animal in his pride,

Arrayed in all the royal hues

125

by Edwin Muir

Merlin

O Merlin in your crystal cave

Deep in the diamond of the day,

Will there ever be a singer

Whose music will smooth away

The furrow drawn by Adam's finger

Across the memory and the wave?

Or a runner who'll outrun

Man's long shadow driving on,

178

by Edwin Muir

Horses

Those lumbering horses in the steady plough,

On the bare field - I wonder, why, just now,

They seemed terrible, so wild and strange,

Like magic power on the stony grange.

Perhaps some childish hour has come again,

When I watched fearful, through the blackening rain,

Their hooves like pistons in an ancient mill

Move up and down, yet seem as standing still.

131

by Edwin Muir

Scotland 1941

We were a tribe, a family, a people.

Wallace and Bruce guard now a painted field,

And all may read the folio of our fable,

Peruse the sword, the sceptre and the shield.

A simple sky roofed in that rustic day,

The busy corn-fields and the haunted holms,

The green road winding up the ferny brae.

But Knox and Melville clapped their preaching palms

120

by Edwin Muir

Scotland's Winter

Now the ice lays its smooth claws on the sill,

The sun looks from the hill

Helmed in his winter casket,

And sweeps his arctic sword across the sky.

The water at the mill

Sounds more hoarse and dull.

The miller's daughter walking by

With frozen fingers soldered to her basket

144

by Edwin Muir

The Good Man in Hell

If a good man were ever housed in Hell

By needful error of the qualities,

Perhaps to prove the rule or shame the devil,

Or speak the truth only a stranger sees,

Would he, surrendering quick to obvious hate,

Fill half eternity with cries and tears,

Or watch beside Hell's little wicket gate

In patience for the first ten thousand years,

216

by Edwin Muir

In Love For Long

I've been in love for long

With what I cannot tell

And will contrive a song

For the intangible

That has no mould or shape,

From which there's no escape.

It is not even a name,

Yet is all constancy;

104

by Edwin Muir

Robert the Bruce (To Douglas in Dying)

'MY life is done, yet all remains,

The breath has gone, the image not,

The furious shapes once forged in heat

Live on though now no longer hot.

'Steadily the shining swords

In order rise, in order fall,

In order on the beaten field

The faithful trumpets call.

161

by Edwin Muir

The Fathers

Our fathers all were poor,

Poorer our fathers' fathers;

Beyond, we dare not look.

We, the sons, keep store

Of tarnished gold that gathers

Around us from the night,

Record it in this book

That, when the line is drawn,

119

by Edwin Muir

Abraham

The rivulet-loving wanderer Abraham

Through waterless wastes tracing his fields of pasture

Led his Chaldean herds and fattening flocks

With the meandering art of wavering water

That seeks and finds, yet does not know its way.

He came, rested and prospered, and went on,

Scattering behind him little pastoral kingdoms,

And over each one its own particular sky,

115

by Edwin Muir