The Way Through The Woods

They shut the road through the woods seventy years ago. 

Weather and rain have undone it again

And know you would never know

There was once a road through the woods

Before they planted the trees. 

It is underneath the coppice and health, 

And the thin anemones. 

Only the keeper sees

That, where the ring-dove broods, 

And the badgers roll at ease, 

There was once a road through the woods. 

Yet, if you enter the woods

Of a summer evening late, 

When the night air-cools on the trout-ringed pools

Where the otter whistles his mate, 

(They fear not men in the woods, 

Because they see so few.) 

You will hear the beat of a horse's feet, 

And the swish of the skirt in the dew, 

Steadily cantering though 

The misty solitudes, 

As though they perfectly kenw

The old lost road through the woods... 

But there is no road through the woods!