"The Way Through the Woods"

Random Poetry List LXIV

They shut the road through the woods
   Seventy years ago.
Weather and rain have undone it again,
   And now you would never know
There was once a path through the woods
   Before they planted the trees,
It is underneath the coppice and heath,
   And the thin anemones.
   Only the keeper sees
That, where the ring-dove broods,
   And the badgers roll at ease,
There was once a road through the woods.

Yet, if you enter the woods
   Of a summer evening late,
When the night-air cools on the trout-ring'd pools
   Where the otter whistles his mate,
(They fear not men in the woods
   Because they see so few)
You will hear the beat of a horse's feet
   And the swish of a skirt in the dew,
   Steadily cantering through
The misty solitudes,
   As though they perfectly knew
The old lost road through the woods ...
But there is no road through the woods.

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)

Originally e-mailed on Thursday, August 09, 2001 @ 8:54 PM.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Wed. 08/09/06 07:43:52 AM
Categorized as Literary & Random Poetry List.