Selected Poems - Aldous Huxley - HEPHERD, to yon tall poplars tune your flute: Let them pierce, keenly, subtly shrill, The slow blue rumour of the hill; Let the grass cry with an anguish of evening gold, And the great sky be mute. Then hearken how the poplar trees unfold Their buds, yet close and gummed and blind, In airy leafage of the mind, Rustling in silvery whispers the twin-hued scales That fade not nor grow old. Poplars and fountains and you cypress spires Springing in dark and rusty flame, Seek you aught that hath a name? Or say, say: Are you all an upward agony Of undefined desires? Say, are you happy in the golden march Of sunlight all across the day? Or do you watch the uncertain way That leads the withering moon on cloudy stairs Over the heavens wide arch? Is it towards sorrow or towards joy you lift The sharpness of your trembling spears? Or do you seek, through the grey tears That blur the sky, in the heart of the triumphing blue, A deeper, calmer rift? So; I have tuned my music to the trees, And there were voices dim below Their shrillness, voices swelling slow In the blue murmur of hills, and a golden cry And then vast silences.
