Over Sir John's Hill - Dylan Thomas

Over Sir John’s hill,

The hawk on fire hangs still;

In a hoisted cloud, at drop of dusk, he pulls to his

Claws

And gallows, up the rays of his eyes the small birds of

The bay

And the shrill child’s play

Wars

Of the sparrows and such who swansing, dusk, in

Wrangling hedges.

And blithely they squawk

To fiery tyburn over the wrestle of elms until

The flash the noosed hawk

Crashes, and slowly the fishing holy stalking heron

In the river Towy below bows his tilted headstone.

Flash, and the plumes crack,

And a black cap of jack-

Daws Sir John’s just hill dons, and again the gulled

Birds hare

To the hawk on fire, the halter height, over Towy’s

Fins,

In a whack of wind.

There

Where the elegiac fisherbird stabs and paddles

In the pebbly dab-filled

Shallow and sedge, and 'dilly dilly, ' calls the loft

Hawk,

'Come and be killed, '

I open the leaves of the water at a passage

Of psalms and shadows among the pincered sandcrabs

Prancing

And read, in a shell

Death clear as a bouy’s bell:

All praise of the hawk on fire in hawk-eyed dusk be

Sung,

When his viperish fuse hangs looped with flames under

The brand

Wing, and blest shall

Young

Green chickens of the bay and bushes cluck, 'dilly

Dilly,

Come let us die.'

We grieve as the blithe birds, never again, leave

Shingle and elm,

The heron and I,

I young Aesop fabling to the near night by the dingle

Of eels, saint heron hymning in the shell-hung distant

Crystal harbour vale

Where the sea cobbles sail,

And wharves of water where the walls dance and the

White cranes stilt.

It is the heron and I, under judging Sir John’s elmed

Hill, tell-tale the knelled

Guilt

Of the led-astray birds whom God, for their breast of

Whistles,

Have Mercy on,

God in his whirlwind silence save, who marks the

Sparrows hail,

For their souls' song.

Now the heron grieves in the weeded verge.

Through

Windows

Of dusk and water I see the tilting whispering

Heron, mirrored, go,

As the snapt feathers snow,

Fishing in the tear of the Towy.

Only a hoot owl

Hollows, a grassblade blown in cupped hands, in the

Looted elms

And no green cocks or hens

Shout

Now on Sir John’s hill.

The heron, ankling the scaly

Lowlands of the waves,

Makes all the music;

and I who hear the tune of the

Slow,

Wear-willow river, grave,

Before the lunge of the night, the notes on this time-

Shaken

Stone for the sake of the souls of the slain birds

Sailing.