Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Louis Untermeyer, ed. (1885–1977). Modern British Poetry. 1920.

Lord Dunsany1878–1957

Songs from an Evil Wood

THERE is no wrath in the stars,

They do not rage in the sky;

I look from the evil wood

And find myself wondering why.

Why do they not scream out

And grapple star against star,

Seeking for blood in the wood

As all things round me are?

They do not glare like the sky

Or flash like the deeps of the wood;

But they shine softly on

In their sacred solitude.

To their high, happy haunts

Silence from us has flown,

She whom we loved of old

And know it now she is gone.

When will she come again,

Though for one second only?

She whom we loved is gone

And the whole world is lonely.

And the elder giants come

Sometimes, tramping from far

Through the weird and flickering light

Made by an earthly star.

And the giant with his club,

And the dwarf with rage in his breath,

And the elder giants from far,

They are all the children of Death.

They are all abroad to-night

And are breaking the hills with their brood,—

And the birds are all asleep

Even in Plug Street Wood!

Somewhere lost in the haze

The sun goes down in the cold,

And birds in this evil wood

Chirrup home as of old;

Chirrup, stir and are still,

On the high twigs frozen and thin.

There is no more noise of them now,

And the long night sets in.

Of all the wonderful things

That I have seen in the wood

I marvel most at the birds

And their wonderful quietude.

For a giant smites with his club

All day the tops of the hill,

Sometimes he rests at night,

Oftener he beats them still.

And a dwarf with a grim black mane

Raps with repeated rage

All night in the valley below

On the wooden walls of his cage.

I met with Death in his country,

With his scythe and his hollow eye,

Walking the roads of Belgium.

I looked and he passed me by.

Since he passed me by in Plug Street,

In the wood of the evil name,

I shall not now lie with the heroes,

I shall not share their fame;

I shall never be as they are,

A name in the lands of the Free,

Since I looked on Death in Flanders

And he did not look at me.