Recurring suns that rise and blaze and die;
Grass-ruffling winds or tempests that trees tear;
And one eternal arch of changing sky
At which I do forever stare and stare -
The wash of winter rains, the chill of dew,
White warmth of snow or tingle of black frost -
Such I do know and such I ever knew
Far in my mind where count of time is lost:
Back there where there is naught of conscious me
Save as vague part of one huge entity -
One boundless stretching undulating skin
Informed with dark primordial life within.
So through the barren years barren I lay,
While the world weathered and stars burned away -
Lost in that vastness did my smallness lie,
Conscious of naught but sun and wind and sky,
And that old mystery of quickening
Which stirred my being each returning spring -
I do not know when first there woke in me
Dim premonitions of identity:
When first my contours seemed no things of chance,
But held a sudden deep significance;
When year by year more pertinent did grow
Each rod of soil, each yard of crankt hedgerow;
When seed-time and grave harvest came to be
Clear and more clearly charged with destiny -
Until it was, I know not why or how,
Borne in on me that I was 'Bennett's Plough':
And with that knowledge revelation came:
That they gave me a soul, who gave a name.
NOTE: Bennett's Plough is presumably the same Plough Inn, New Ollerton, referred to in Coming Home from Kirkton