YOU, ANDREW MARVELL
And here face down beneath
the sun
And here upon earth's noonward
height
To feel the always coming
on
The always rising of the
night:
To feel creep up the curving
east
The earthy chill of dusk
and slow
Upon those under lands the
vast
And ever climbing shadow
grow
And strange at Ecbatan the
trees
Take leaf by leaf the evening
strange
The flooding dark about their
knees
The mountains over Persia
change
And now at Kermanshah the
gate
Dark empty and the withered
grass
And through the twilight
now the late
Few travelers in the westward
pass
And Baghdad darken and the
bridge
Across the silent river gone
And through Arabia the edge
Of evening widen and steal
on
And deepen on Palmyra's street
The wheel rut in the ruined
stone
And Lebanon fade out and
Crete
High through the clouds and
overblown
And over Sicily the air
Still flashing with the landward
gulls
And loom and slowly disappear
The sails above the shadowy
hulls
And Spain go under and the
shore
Of Africa the gilded sand
And evening vanish and no
more
The low pale light across
that land
Nor now the long light on
the sea:
And here face downward in
the sun
To feel how swift, how secretly
The shadow of the night comes
on.
