From broken brows the dim eyes stared,
Blistered and maimed the wide stumps grinned
From the black mouth of Thelus bared
In laughter at some monstrous jest.
No creature moved there, weed nor wind.
Huge arms, half-torn from savage breast,
Hung wide, and tangled limbs and faces
Lay, as if giants blind and stark
With violent, with perverse embraces
Groped for each other in the dark.
A moaning rose--not of the wind,
--There was no wind, but hollowly
From its dim bed of mud each tree
Gave forth a sound, till trees and mud
Seemed but a single, sighing mouth,
A wound that spoke with lips uncouth,
And cried to me from Thelus Wood.
I heard one tree say: "This was I
Who drew great clouds across the sky
To weep against me." This one said:
"I made a gloom where love might lie
All day and dream it night, a bed
Secret and soft, the birds' song had
A twilight sound the whole day there."
One said: "Last night I shook my hair
Before the mirror of the moon."
"I saw a corpse to-day," said one
"That was but buried yester-year."
And one, the smallest, sweetest thing--
A fair child-tree made never stir,
Dead before God had tended her
In the green nurseries of Spring.
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