SOURCE: “On Robert Francis' ‘Sheep,’” in Field, No. 25, Fall, 1981, pp. 23-5.

In the following essay, Wilbur discusses Francis's poem “Sheep” in terms of its simple formal elements, as well as its more profound implications.

“sheep”

From where I stand the sheep stand still As stones against the stony hill. 

The stones are gray And so are they. 

And both are weatherworn and round, Leading the eye back to the ground. 

Two mingled flocks— The sheep, the rocks. 

And still no sheep stirs from its place Or lifts its Babylonian face. 

I think that I have known this poem since my undergraduate days at Amherst, and I remain grateful for its perfection.

It is, if you look for tricks, a very artful poem indeed. Two motionless constellations of things—sheep and rocks—are being likened, and this is formally expressed by the linked twoness of tetrameter couplets, and of...