Page:Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1918.djvu/1107

 RUDYARD KIPLING

The Lord knows what we may find, dear lass,

And the deuce knows what we may do

But we're back once more on the old trail, our own trail,

the out trail, We're down, hull down on the Long Trail the trail that

is always new.

��The Way through the Woods

V HEY shut the load through the woods Seventy years ago. Weather and rain have undone it again,

And now you would never know There was once a path 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-ring'd pools

Where the otter whibtles 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

�� �