XVI

     Perchance a lady sweet, whose lord lay slain,
     The robbers into gruesome durance drew. 
     Swift should her hero come, like lightning’s blue! 
     She prayed for him, as crackling drought for rain.

     XVII

     As we, that ere the worst her hero haps,
     Of Angels guided, nigh that loathly den: 
     A toady cave beside an ague fen,
     Where long forlorn the lone dog whines and yaps.

     XVIII

     By daylight now the forest fear could read
     Itself, and at new wonders chuckling went. 
     Straight for the roebuck’s neck the bowman spent
     A dart that laughed at distance and at speed.

     XIX

     Right loud the bugle’s hallali elate
     Rang forth of merry dingles round the tors;
     And deftest hand was he from foreign wars,
     But soon he hailed the home-bred yeoman mate.

     XX

     Before the blackbird pecked the turf they woke;
     At dawn the deer’s wet nostrils blew their last. 
     To forest, haunt of runs and prime repast,
     With paying blows, the yokel strained his yoke.

     XXI

     The city urchin mooned on forest air,
     On grassy sweeps and flying arrows, thick
     As swallows o’er smooth streams, and sighed him sick
     For thinking that his dearer home was there.

     XXII

     Familiar, still unseized, the forest sprang
     An old-world echo, like no mortal thing. 
     The hunter’s horn might wind a jocund ring,
     But held in ear it had a chilly clang.

     XXIII

     Some shadow lurked aloof of ancient time;
     Some warning haunted any sound prolonged,
     As though the leagues of woodland held them wronged
     To hear an axe and see a township climb.

     XXIV

     The forest’s erewhile emperor at eve
     Had voice when lowered heavens drummed for gales. 
     At midnight a small people danced the dales,
     So thin that they might dwindle through a sieve

     XXV

     Ringed mushrooms told of them, and in their throats,
     Old wives that gathered herbs and knew too much. 
     The pensioned forester beside his crutch,
     Struck showers from embers at those bodeful notes.

     XXVI

     Came then the one, all ear, all eye, all heart;
     Devourer, and insensibly devoured;
     In whom the city over forest flowered,
     The forest wreathed the city’s drama-mart.

     XXVII

     There found he in new form that Dragon old,
     From tangled solitudes expelled; and taught
     How blindly each its antidote besought;
     For either’s breath the needs of either told.

     XXVIII

     Now deep in woods, with song no sermon’s drone,
     He showed what charm the human concourse works: 
     Amid the press of men, what virtue lurks
     Where bubble sacred wells of wildness lone.