Sleepers

Where are the Gods that used to walk the Weald,
Where are their golden limbs and fiery faces,
Divinities of river, tree and field,
The uncommon spirits of the common places?
Where are the gaudy Goddesses of Heaven?
Where are the old immortal sisterhood,
True, talismanic three, or nine, or seven,
Arch-arbiters of evil and of good?
They are dead, you say. Stone dead, you say again.
This wonderful, wide world belongs to men,
And men alone. Show me the bodies then?
I say they sleep. I say they sleep up there,
Inviolate and secret, free from care
For ever, in a better, purer air.