The Feud

Rocks, trees and rocks; and down a mossy stone
The murmuring ooze and trickle of a stream
Through brambles, where the mountain spring lies lone,--
A gleaming cairngorm where the shadows dream,--
And one wild road winds like a saffron seam.

Here sang the thrush, whose pure, mellifluous note
Dropped golden sweetness on the fragrant June;
Here cat-and blue-bird and wood-sparrow wrote
Their presence on the silence with a tune;
And here the fox drank ’neath the mountain moon.

Frail ferns and dewy mosses and dark brush,--
Impenetrable briers, deep and dense,
And wiry bushes;--brush, that seemed to crush
The struggling saplings with its tangle, whence
Sprawled out the ramble of an old rail-fence.

A wasp buzzed by; and then a butterfly
In orange and amber, like a floating flame;
And then a man, hard-eyed and very sly,
Gaunt-cheeked and haggard and a little lame,
With an old rifle, down the mountain came.

He listened, drinking from a flask he took
Out of the ragged pocket of his coat;
Then all around him cast a stealthy look;
Lay down; and watched an eagle soar and float,
His fingers twitching at his hairy throat.

The shades grew longer; and each Cumberland height
Loomed, framed in splendors of the dolphin dusk.
Around the road a horseman rode in sight;
Young, tall, blond-bearded. Silent, grim, and brusque,
He in the thicket aimed--Quick, harsh, then husk,

The echoes barked among the hills and made
Repeated instants of the shot’s distress.--
Then silence--and the trampled bushes swayed:--
Then silence, packed with murder and the press
Of distant hoofs that galloped riderless.