Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936). Verse: 1885–1918. 1922.
The Way through the Woods
T
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.
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 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.