'Tis deepest Mid-day! Not a sound is heard,
Save this low insect-murmur; which yet seems
No voice from mere capricious things of life,
But some mysterious tone of Earth herself,
Holy as Silence! Not a shadow flits
Checquering the plain; no sign of coming change
Varies the sky; no thinnest breath of air
Wafts movement to a bough. Th' unsoftened hills
Stare broadly out, as if they ne'er had known
The veiling touch of Eve; while the hot sea,
Waveless to sight as frozen oceans are,
Beams steadfastly beneath the steadfast sun.
'Tis a strange fixedness, which links with thoughts
Of old eternity; and half might seem
To him who broods in its deep quietude,
As if our world were an unchanging thing,
Where all hath been so from the very first,
And evermore must be.