Gray the slow sky darkens
Over the downland track
Where the long valley closes
Under a smooth hill's back.

The slope is darkly sprinkled
With ancient junipers,
Each a small, secret tree:
There not a breath stirs.

I fear those waiting shapes
Of wry, blue--berried wood.
They make a twilight in my mind,
As if they drained my blood,

As if a spirit were prisoned
Within each writhen stem,
And no one knows their kindred
Nor what frustrated them.

Along the empty valley
Like a ghost go I;
My footsteps and my beating heart
Nothing signify,

Lost into nameless ages
That come, slow cloud on cloud,
From history's beginning
And all the future shroud.

More verses by Robert Laurence Binyon