Verse > Anthologies > Harriet Monroe, ed. > Poetry: A Magazine of Verse, 1912–22
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Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936).  Poetry: A Magazine of Verse.  1912–22.
 
The Puca
By Joseph Campbell
 
THE PUCA’S come again,
Who long was hid away
In cave or twilight glen:
Too shy, too proud to play
Under the eye of day.        5
 
I saw him dance and skip
But now in the beech wood,
Wild rhymes upon his lip
And laughter in his blood.
I envied him his grip        10
Upon the sunny mood.
 
Then altered he his note
To one of weariness:
He shook his hairy coat,
The double of distress,        15
And cried deep in his throat
For gall and bitterness.
 
The Puca’s gone again
To sleep his wits away
In cave or twilight glen:        20
Too shy, too proud to stay
Under the eye of day.

  NOTE. The Puca seems essentially an animal spirit. Some derive his name from poc, a he-goat; and speculative persons consider him the father of Shakespeare’s Puck. On solitary mountains and among old ruins he lives, “grown monstrous with much solitude,” and is of the race of the nightmare.—W. B. Yeats, Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry.
 
 
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