In a February field, the speaker hears starlings squabbling, rooks and gulls following the plough—sounds that have filled the air for a thousand years and will fill it a thousand more. The birds shift places at a single caw, first becoming last and last first, obeying a rule so old it feels like law. The speaker imagines his own dust lying forgotten while the birds carry on between hedge and shaw. Time swims, compressing a millennium into a day. Beneath a ploughland oak, men still strike and receive the blows of war, as they always have. And above it all sits a God we have made, stone-deaf and stone-blind. The mood is motionless and chill—an exhausted recognition that nature’s rhythms outlast us, war never changes, and whatever we look to for justice offers none. There is no redemption, only the quiet roar of continuity.
February Afternoon — Summary
MEN heard this roar of parleying starlings, saw, A thousand years ago even as now, Black rooks with white gulls following the plough So that the first are last until a caw Commands that last are first again,--a law Which was of old when one, like me, dreamed how A thousand years might dust lie on his brow Yet thus would birds do between hedge and shaw.
Time swims before me, making as a day A thousand years, while the broad ploughland oak Roars mill-like and men strike and bear the stroke Of war as ever, audacious or resigned, And God still sits aloft in the array That we have wrought him, stone-deaf and stone-blind.