And naked to the hangman’s noose
 The morning clocks will ring
A neck God made for other use
 Than strangling in a string.

And sharp the link of life will snap,
 And dead on air will stand
Heels that held up as straight a chap
 As treads upon the land.

So here I’ll watch the night and wait
 To see the morning shine,
When he will hear the stroke of eight
 And not the stroke of nine;

And wish my friend as sound a sleep
 As lads’ I did not know,
That shepherded the moonlit sheep
 A hundred years ago.

[1] Hanging in chains was called keeping sheep by moonlight.

X

MARCH

The sun at noon to higher air,
Unharnessing the silver Pair
That late before his chariot swam,
Rides on the gold wool of the Ram.

So braver notes the storm-cock sings
To start the rusted wheel of things,
And brutes in field and brutes in pen
Leap that the world goes round again.

The boys are up the woods with day
To fetch the daffodils away,
And home at noonday from the hills
They bring no dearth of daffodils.

Afield for palms the girls repair,
And sure enough the palms are there,
And each will find by hedge or pond
Her waving silver-tufted wand.

In farm and field through all the shire
The eye beholds the heart’s desire;
Ah, let not only mine be vain,
For lovers should be loved again.

XI

On your midnight pallet lying
 Listen, and undo the door: 
Lads that waste the light in sighing
 In the dark should sigh no more;
Night should ease a lover’s sorrow;
Therefore, since I go to-morrow;
 Pity me before.

In the land to which I travel,
 The far dwelling, let me say-
Once, if here the couch is gravel,
 In a kinder bed I lay,
And the breast the darnel smothers
Rested once upon another’s
 When it was not clay.

XII

When I watch the living meet,
 And the moving pageant file
Warm and breathing through the street
 Where I lodge a little while,

If the heats of hate and lust
 In the house of flesh are strong,
Let me mind the house of dust
 Where my sojourn shall be long.

In the nation that is not
 Nothing stands that stood before;
There revenges are forgot,
 And the hater hates no more;

Lovers lying two and two
 Ask not whom they sleep beside,
And the bridegroom all night through
 Never turns him to the bride.

XIII

When I was one-and-twenty
 I heard a wise man say,
“Give crowns and pounds and guineas
 But not your heart away;
Give pearls away and rubies
 But keep your fancy free.” 
But I was one-and-twenty,
 No use to talk to me.