The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations Preface

The hour when earth’s foundations fled,
Followed their mercenary calling
And took their wages and are dead.
Their shoulders held the sky suspended;
They stood, and earth’s foundations stay;
What God abandoned, these defended,
And saved the sum of things for pay.
‘Last Poems’ (1922) no. 37 ‘Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries’
For nature, heartless, witless nature,
Will neither care nor know
What stranger’s feet may find the meadow
And trespass there and go,
Nor ask amid the dews of morning
If they are mine or no.
‘Last Poems’ (1922) no. 40
The rainy Pleiads wester,
Orion plunges prone,
The stroke of midnight ceases,
And I lie down alone.
‘More Poems’ (1936) no. 11
Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose;
But young men think it is, and we were young.
‘More Poems’ (1936) no. 36
Good-night. Ensured release
Imperishable peace,
Have these for yours,
While earth’s foundations stand
And sky and sea and land
And heaven endures.
‘More Poems’ (1936) no. 48 ‘Alta Quies’
Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.
‘A Shropshire Lad’ (1896) no. 2
And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.
‘A Shropshire Lad’ (1896) no. 2