The Way through the woods - Reflections

 

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.

                                       -- Rudyard Kipling 

Reflections

 

Reading this poem gives you that mystic feeling, of a road closed long ago, among the wooded forest, where there still lingers that haunting rider and his lady love. Splendid poem. Very haunting and full of mystery. I wonder, when in some quiet and remote travel spot, you might see some road winding through a forest, remember this poem. It might add that aura of the unknown seeing you through hidden eyes.