| |
| SHE is standing at the gate, | |
| Tall and sweet, | |
| And although the hour be late | |
| She will greet | |
| Me, her lover, | 5 |
| 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, | 10 |
| 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, | 15 |
| 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, | 20 |
| 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, | 25 |
| 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, | 30 |
| 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— | 35 |
| 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 | 40 |
| On this breast— | |
| Put aside all | |
| Fancies idle, | |
| I will shield you—Love is best.’ | |
| |
