Page:The Poems of Henry Kendall (1920).djvu/122

 Then took the cattle to the forest camps

With vacant terror, and the hustled sheep

Stood dumb against the hurdles, even like

A fallen patch of shadowed mountain snow;

And ever through the curlew's call afar,

The storm grew on, while round the stinted slabs

Sharp snaps and hisses came, and went, and came,

The huddled tokens of a mighty blast

Which ran with an exceeding bitter cry

Across the tumbled fragments of the hills,

And through the sluices of the gorge and glen.

So, therefore, all about the shepherd's hut

That space was mute, save when the fastened dog,

Without a kennel, caught a passing glimpse

Of firelight moving through the lighted chinks,

For then he knew the hints of warmth within,

And stood and set his great pathetic eyes,

In wind and wet, imploring to be loosed.

Not often now the watcher left the couch

Of him she watched, since in his fitful sleep

His lips would stir to wayward themes, and close

With bodeful catches. Once she moved away,

Half-deafened by terrific claps, and stooped

And looked without—to see a pillar dim

Of gathered gusts and fiery rain.

Anon

The sick man woke, and, startled by the noise,

Stared round the room with dull, delirious sight,

At this wild thing and that: for through his eyes

The place took fearful shapes, and fever showed

Strange crosswise lights about his pillow-head.

He, catching there at some phantasmic help,

Sat upright on the bolster with a cry

Of "Where is Jesus? It is bitter cold!"

And then, because the thunder-calls outside

Were mixed for him with slanders of the past,

He called his weeping wife by name, and said,

Come closer, darling! We shall speed away

Across the seas, and seek some mountain home

Shut in from liars and the wicked words

That track us day and night and night and day."