Classic Poem

Unflinching I have borne the brunt of spears—
Yet, under these dark boughs that writhe and twist,
My heart is as a wren's heart when she hears
The litch-owl calling through the evening mist,
And falters cowed, a thing of fluttering fears,
Before some shadow-plumed antagonist.

Quaking I ride, yet know not what I dread:
Naught stirs the boding silence but the sound
Of beechmast crackling 'neath my horse's tread,
Or some last leaf that flutters to the ground;
And long it seems since, rayless and blood-red,
The sun in seas of night-black boughs was drowned.

Still darkness falls not yet, though wavering gloom
Sweeps through the brake and brims each hollow dank:
Empty of light the stirless pine-trees loom
Against the glistering sky, and grey and lank
The shadows rise as ghosts from out the tomb
And, closing, follow at my horse's flank.

But them I fear not, nor the beasts that lurk
Beneath the cavernous branches crouching low,
Whose famished eyes flame on me through the mirk:
Spell-bound they spring not; 'neath the cleaver's blow
Their desperate fangs would snatch the blinded stirk,
Yet quail before the doom to which I go—

The unknown death-plumed horror that at last
From its old ambush in the heart of night,
Leagued with long-thwarted perils of the past,
Shall swoop down on me with unswerving flight.
Drink while you may the light that fades so fast,
O eyes that shall not see the morning-light!