Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE FLOCK AT EVENING, by ODELL SHEPARD


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE FLOCK AT EVENING, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Down from the rocky western steep
Last Line: Among the dews of dawning time.
Subject(s): Shepherds & Shepherdesses


Down from the rocky western steep
Where now the sunset crumbles low
The shepherd draws his sun-drowsed sheep
Ringed in a rosy glow;
Along the dusty leaf-hung lane,
Now blurred in shade, now bright again,
They trail in splendour, aureoled
And mystical in clouded gold.

As insubstantial as a dream
They huddle homeward by my door, --
From what Theocritean stream
Or what Thessalian shore?
What ancient air surrounds them still,
As though from some Arcadian hill
They shuffled through the afterglow
Across the fields of long ago?

Is this the flock that Bion kept
From straying by his reed-soft tunes
While the long ilex shadow crept
Through ancient afternoons?
In some still Arethusan wood,
Ages agone, have they not stood
Wondering, circle-wise and mute,
Round some remote Sicilian flute?

I think that they have gazed across
The dazzle of Ionian seas
From the green capes of Tenedos
Or sea-washed Cyclades,
And loitered through the twilight down
The hills that gird some Attic town
Still shining in the early gloam
Beside the murmur of the foam.

What dream is this? I know the croft,
Deep in this dale, where they were born;
I know their wind-swept hills aloft
Among the rustling corn;
Yet while they glimmer slowly by
A younger earth, a fairer sky
Seem round them and they move sublime
Among the dews of dawning time.





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