101 . Mid-Forest Fear

SHE is standing at the gate,

Tall and sweet,

And although the hour be late

She will greet

Me, her lover,

Smiling over

Absent mind and tardy feet.

‘Rest,’ I’ll say to her, ‘and more rest,’

As she wraps her love around me,

And I’ll tell her of the forest,

Of the strange, fear-haunted forest

Where the fleshless beings found me.

For I trod a rock-strewn rude way

Thinking only of my lover,

When the moonlight on the woodway,

Made a weird-way of the woodway,

And a place where demons hover.

For the leaves that had been sleeping

On the sodden soil-bed lying,

Took a motion and ’gan creeping,

Like a thousand small feet creeping,

And there rose a distant sighing.

Why the trees did droop their tresses,

Weeping leaves for something under,

And what bode in dim recesses,

Feline-lurked in dim recesses,

Paled my cheeks and heart to ponder.

Had I feet I would have hurried,

But the moonlit forest chained me,

Soul and body grasped and worried,

With frost-fingers gripped and worried,

Till, half-stayed, my hurt heart pained me.…

‘Rest,’ I’ll say, ‘my Love, and more rest;

Things unseen have life and motion

And they haunt the moonlit forest—

Soul-affronting haunt the forest,

And men meet them on the ocean.’

She will look so grave and kind,

Saying ‘Rest—

Rest is here for heart and mind

On this breast—

Put aside all

Fancies idle,

I will shield you—Love is best.’