Classic Poem

(On a Devon Moor)


Why do I babble of bitter chills--
And icy trees--and snowy fallows?
Why do I shudder as twilight spills
A ghostly gray and the bent moon sallows
The moor with her wicked flame?
Why do the gibbering croons of the hag
In her hut by the wood
Go muttering, muttering in my blood--
Till the hoot of an owl
On the snag of a tomb
Breaks out of the gloom
Like the wail of a witch's name?

Ugh, it is drawing my feet away--
The road's gone! the moonlet's sunken!
What shall I do if it comes to fray
With fiends invisible, wild and drunken--
Fiends on a churchless fell!
Ha, is it cracking of ice in the bog
That is clutching my throat,
Or devils gnawing the widow's shoat?
By the Cross of the Christ,
There's a fog that is black
As--U-r-r!--at my back!--
They are dragging me ... down to ... hell!