| 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 road 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-ringed pools |
| Where the otter whistles his mate, |
| (They fear not men in the woods, |
| Because the 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 |
Classic Poems |
| |
|
[ If ] [ The Way Through the Woods ] [ Danny Deever ] [ Recessional ] [ Tommy ] [ The White Man's Burden ] [ Chant-Pagan ] [ The Deep Sea Cables ] [ The Dykes ] [ Gunga Din ] [ The Gods of the Copybook Headings ] [ Fuzzy-Wuzzy ] [ The Land ] [ The Old Men ] [ My Rival ] |
