Over Sir John's Hill Songtext
von Dylan Thomas

Over Sir John′s Hill
The hawk on fire hangs still
In a hoisted cloud at drop of dusk
He pulls to his claws and gallows
Up the rays of his eyes the small birds of the bay
And the shrill child's-play wars
Of the sparrows and such who swansing dusk
In wrangling hedges
And blithely they squawk
To fiery Tyburn over the wrestle of elms and tiln
The flash the noosed hawk crashes
And slowly the fishing, holy, stalking heron
In the river Towie below
Bows his tilted headstone
Flash and the plumes crack
And a blackcap of jackdaws Sir John′s just hill dawns
And again the gulled birds hare
To the hawk on fire the halter hiked
Over Towie's finns in a whack of wind
There where the elegiac fisherbird stabs and paddles


In the pebbly dad-filled shallow and sedge
And dilly-dilly calls the loft hawk, come and be killed
I open the leaves of the water at a passage
Of suns and shadows
Among the pincered sand-crabs prancing
And read in a shell
Death clear as a boy's bell
All praise of the hawk on fire
In hawk-eyed dusk be sung
When his viperish fuse hangs looped with flames
Under the brand-wing
And blessed shall young green chickens of the bay and bushes
Cluck dilly-dilly, come let us die
We grieve as the green birds never again
Leave shingle and elm, the heron and I
I young Aesop fabling to the near night
By the dingle of eels
St. Heron hymning in the shell-hung
Distant crystal harbour veil
Where the sea-cobble sail
And wards of water where the walls dance
And the white cranes stilt
It is the heron and I
Under judging Sir John′s elm′d hill
Tell tale the knell'd guilt
Of the led astray birds whom God for their breast of whistles
Have mercy on
God in his whirlwind save
Who marks the sparrows hail
For their sole song
Now the heron grieves in the weeded verge
Through windows of dusk and water
I see the tilting whispering heron mirrored go
As the snapped feathers snow
Fishing in the tear of the Towie
Only a hoot owl hollows
A grass-blade blown in cupped hands
In the looted elms
And no green cocks or hens
Shout now on Sir John′s hill
The heron ankling the scaly lowlands of the waves
Makes all the music
And I who hear the tune
Of the slow, where-willow river
Grave before the lunge of the night
The notes on this time-shaken stone
For the sake of the souls of the slain birds sailing