Mid-Forest Fear

She is standing at the gate,
Tall and sweet,
And although the hour be late
She will greet
Me, her lover,
Smiling over
Absent mind and tardy feet.

' Rest,' I'll say to her, ' and more rest,'
As she wraps her love around me,
And I'll tell her of the forest,
Of the strange, fear-haunted forest
Where the fleshless beings found me.

For I trod a rock-strewn rude way
Thinking only of my lover,
When the moonlight on the woodway
Made a weird-way of the woodway,
And a place where demons hover.

For the leaves that had been sleeping
On the sodden soil-bed lying,
Took a motion and 'gan creeping,
Like a thousand small feet creeping,
And there rose a distant sighing.

Why the trees did droop their tresses,
Weeping leaves for something under,
And what bode in dim recesses,
Feline-lurked in dim recesses,
Paled my cheeks and heart to ponder.

Had I feet I would have hurried,
But the moonlit forest chained me,
Soul and body grasped and worried,
With frost-fingers gripped and worried,
Till, half -stayed, my hurt heart pained me.

' Rest,' I'll say, ' my Love, and more rest ;
Things unseen have life and motion
And they haunt the moonlit forest —
Soul-affronting haunt the forest,
And men meet them on the ocean.'

She will look so grave and kind,
Saying ' Rest —
Rest is here for heart and mind
On this breast —
Put aside all
Fancies idle,
I will shield you — Love is best.'