Long time he lay upon the sunny hill,
To his father's house below securely bound.

(Edwin Muir (1887-1959), Scottish poet. Childhood (l. 1-2). . . Norton Anthology of Poetry, The. Alexander W. Allison and others, eds. (3d ed., 1983) W. W. Norton & Company.)

The world's great day is growing late,
Yet strange these fields that we have planted
So long with crops of love and hate.

(Edwin Muir (1887-1959), Scottish poet. One Foot in Eden (l. 3-5). . . New Oxford Book of English Verse, The, 1250-1950. Helen Gardner, ed. (1972) Oxford University Press.)

But famished field and blackened tree
Bear flowers in Eden never known.
Blossoms of grief and charity
Bloom in these darkened fields alone.

(Edwin Muir (1887-1959), Scottish poet. One Foot in Eden (l. 20-23). . . New Oxford Book of English Verse, The, 1250-1950. Helen Gardner, ed. (1972) Oxford University Press.)

They do not live in the world,
Are not in time and space.
From birth to death hurled
No word do they have, not one
To plant a foot upon,
Were never in any place.

(Edwin Muir (1887-1959), Scottish poet. The Animals (l. 1-6). . . Norton Anthology of Poetry, The. Alexander W. Allison and others, eds. (3d ed., 1983) W. W. Norton & Company.)

I have observed in foolish awe
The dateless mid-days of the law
And seen indifferent justice done
By everyone on everyone.

(Edwin Muir (1887-1959), Scottish poet. The Brothers (l. 29-32). . . Norton Anthology of Poetry, The. Alexander W. Allison and others, eds. (3d ed., 1983) W. W. Norton & Company.)

Barely a twelvemonth after
The seven days war that put the world to sleep,
Late in the evening the strange horses came.

(Edwin Muir (1887-1959), Scottish poet. The Horses (l. 1-3). . . Norton Anthology of Poetry, The. Alexander W. Allison and others, eds. (3d ed., 1983) W. W. Norton & Company.)

Sometimes we think of the nations lying asleep,
Curled blindly in impenetrable sorrow,
And then the thought confounds us with its strangeness.

(Edwin Muir (1887-1959), Scottish poet. The Horses (l. 21-23). . . Norton Anthology of Poetry, The. Alexander W. Allison and others, eds. (3d ed., 1983) W. W. Norton & Company.)

The ancestral deed is thought and done,
And in a million Edens fall
A million Adams drowned in darkness,
For small is great and great is small,
And a blind seed all.

(Edwin Muir (1887-1959), Scottish poet. The Road (l. 31-35). . . Chief Modern Poets of Britain and America. Gerald DeWitt Sanders, John Herbert Nelson, and M. L. Rosenthal, eds. (5th ed., 1970) Macmillan Publishing Company.)

There is a road that turning always
Cuts off the country of Again.
Archers stand there on every side
And as it runs time's deer is slain,
And lies where it has lain.

(Edwin Muir (1887-1959), Scottish poet. The Road (l. 1-5). . . Chief Modern Poets of Britain and America. Gerald DeWitt Sanders, John Herbert Nelson, and M. L. Rosenthal, eds. (5th ed., 1970) Macmillan Publishing Company.)

Last night I watched my brothers play,
The gentle and the reckless one,
In a field two yards away.
For half a century they were gone
Beyond the other side of care
To be among the peaceful dead.

(Edwin Muir (1887-1959), Scottish poet. The Brothers (l. 1-6). . . Norton Anthology of Poetry, The. Alexander W. Allison and others, eds. (3d ed., 1983) W. W. Norton & Company.)