| He sweeps apast me |
| With his glittering scythe and victor-arm. |
If she be not, and these are hunters
For the sport’s sake, if they pursue her,
Panther-like for the wild beauty
Of her ways.
******
Though I could see an hundred witches
’Gainst the white moon flying.
(The Spirit of Witchcraft).
There have been doings dark as night,
And close as death: murders and deadliest crimes
Which the clear eye of day has seen not!
Acts to outface the bloody wolf, and scare
The ravenous lion with his unappeasable mane!
Night’s ear hath many counsels of the dark,
She hears the whispers of the self-reproached,
And blacker grows!
******
When boy and girl pluck flowers together,
Together wade, white-ankled in the shining stream,
Gid. (of his mother.)
Some silent place will miss her;
Out of these woods and from these stillnesses
A power with her may pass, bearing a light away!
Who reverences not the Past, Hereafter
Shall not reverence, nor hold to have had
A present time.
Must is a lion that turns back
To tear its driver, you know, no less than hunt
What goes before.
What say you to a great-antlered elk
Tangling his horns amid the branches
Of the hemlock wood? to speckled swimmers
In still-water stream?
| The Earth hath foothold |
| For the unsubstantial dark alone. |
