The black downs tower to westward

A tomb for the buried sun,

The flats of the water meadows

Are fading from green to dun.

Dark spreads the vast arena,

Swart on the yellow light,

And out of the gloom and the silence

A strange voice cries to the night.

Cries — and a strange voice answers,

Sudden, and hoarse, and slow.

Heavy with pain past telling.

The weight of a monstrous woe.

Still, as I wait and hearken,

I know not which they may be;

Voices of down and marshland.

Or the voice of my heart in me.

But I know that the cry they echo

Was old when the world was young,

The plaint of a nameless sorrow

Whose speech is an unknown tongue.