Songs from an Evil Wood

I.

There is no wrath in the stars,

They do not rage in the sky;

I look from the evil wood

And find myself wondering why.

Why do they scream out

And grapple star against star,

Seeking for blood in the wood,

As all things round me are?

They do not glare like the sky

Or flash like the deeps of the wood;

But they shine softly on

In their sacred solitude.

To their happy haunts

Silence from us has flown,

She whom we loved of old

And know it now she is gone.

When will she come again

Though for one second only?

She whom we loved is gone

And the whole world is lonely.

II.

Somewhere lost in the haze

The sun goes down in the cold,

And birds in this evil wood

Chirrup home as of old;

Chirrup, stir and are still,

On the high twigs frozen and thin.

There is no more noise of them now,

And the long night sets in.

Of all the wonderful things

That I have seen in the wood,

I marvel most at the birds,

At their chirp and their quietude.

For a giant smites with his club

All day the tops of the hill,

Sometimes he rests at night,

Oftener he beats them still.

And a dwarf with a grim black mane

Raps with repeated rage

All night in the valley blow

On the wooden walls of his cage.

And the elder giants come

Sometimes, tramping from far,

Through the weird and flickering light

Made by an earthly star.

And the giant with his club,

And the dwarf with rage in his breath,

And the elder giants from far,

They are the children of Death.

They are all abroad to-night

And are breaking the hills with their brood,

And the birds are all asleep,

even in Plugstreet Wood.

-from Fifty Poems.