This poem was first published in 1911, in Poems in Wiltshire, but also appeared in Selected Poems (1925). In Poems in Wiltshire it was sub-titled '(Chandlers' Firs.)'. blank How still, how solitary are the heights    That round me in a sweeping circle lie!    A hazy texture intercepts the sky, The glimmering field is strewed with golden lights; The languorous air to soothing sleep invites;    No breath to mar the stillness, not a sigh!    No rustling cricket's chirp, nor any cry, No peewits wheeling their aerial flights. It seems that every living thing were fled;    Suspended Nature hung aside her lute; That ghostly Silence, from the land of dread,    Stole hitherward our senses to confute; That the inhabitable world were dead;    Language unheard of, sound itself were mute. Title photography by Richard Bradshaw Poems index Alphabetical list of poems online