The Way Through the Woods
Rudyard Kipling 1865 (Mumbai) – 1936 (London)
They shut the road through the woods
Seventy years ago.
Weather and rain have undone it again,
And now you would never know
There was once a road through the woods
Before they planted the trees.
It is underneath the coppice and heath,
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 a skirt in the dew,
Steadily cantering through
The misty solitudes,
As though they perfectly knew
The old lost road through the woods. . . .
But there is no road through the woods.
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on May 03, 2023
- 46 sec read
- 452 Views
Quick analysis:
Scheme | abxbAcxacacA adxdaexeeaeaa |
---|---|
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 805 |
Words | 153 |
Stanzas | 2 |
Stanza Lengths | 12, 13 |
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"The Way Through the Woods" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 18 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/33604/the-way-through-the-woods>.
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