midnight
A strange , double-burdened contradictory song . There was sorrow in it , such sorrow as her children drink from the breast of the tragic earth ; and through it all and over it the laughter as of some yet virgin and imperishable joy . For Nature sings to every poet the song of his own soul . He spent the last of that Easter Sunday in his shabby little bedroom in the Marine Hotel , where with windows open to the wind and sea he sat writing long past midnight . And hope rose again in him as he surveyed the first rough draft -- that wild battlefield and slaughter-ground of lines , lines shooting and flying in all directions , lines broken and scattered and routed by other lines , over-ridden and trampled down by word upon triumphing word . Above the hideous confusion at least two verses shone luminous and clear ; they had come swinging into the pure ether , full-formed and golden from their birth . And over the whole he wrote in legible characters , '' _ On Harcombe Hill _ . ''