Edwin Muir

The Castle

All through that summer at ease we lay, And daily from the turret wall We watched the mowers in the hay And the enemy half a mile away They seemed no threat to us

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

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

The Child Dying

Unfriendly friendly universe, I pack your stars into my purse, And bid you so farewell. That I can leave you, quite go out, Go out, go out beyond all doubt, My father says, is

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

The windless northern surge, the sea-gull’s scream, And Calvin’s kirk crowning the barren brae. I think of Giotto the Tuscan shepherd’s dream, Christ, man and creature in their inner day. How could our race

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

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

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

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

Circle and Square

‘I give you half of me; No more, lest I should make A ground for perjury. For your sake, for my sake, Half will you take?’ ‘Half I’ll not take nor give, For he

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,

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

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