The Way Through The Woods

[wellinghall]

They shut the road through the woods
Seventy years ago.
Weather and rain have undone it again,
And now you would never know
There was once a road through the woods
Before they planted the trees.
It is underneath the coppice and heath,
And the thin anemones.
Only the keeper sees
That, where the ring-dove broods,
And the badgers roll at ease,
There was once a road through the woods.

Yet, if you enter the woods
Of a summer evening late,
When the night-air cools on the trout-ringed pools
Where the otter whistles his mate.
(They fear not men in the woods,
Because they see so few)
You will hear the beat of a horse's feet,
And the swish of a skirt in the dew,
Steadily cantering through
The misty solitudes,
As though they perfectly knew
The old lost road through the woods . . . .
But there is no road through the woods.

-- Rudyard Kipling

Comments

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

ON my summer's trip to Uffington Castle/Wayland Smithy, I observed in the middle of the wayside next to the main, surfaced path/bridleway, a signposted path that appeared to run practically through the hedge. Presumably there was some long-standing issue of preserving it as a right of way separate from the now main road/path that had caused it not to be just allowed to grow over completely. Walking down it, a yard from the path, gave a very disconcerting feeling that one had a good chance of emerging at the other end two hundred years hence.

[hyalma.livejournal.com]

I like very much this poem. I remember that some months ago I posted it on our Forum saying that it sounds somewhat elvish.

[dreiviertel.livejournal.com]

Thanks for posting this poem. I didn't know it. I agree that it has a Tolkien air about it.

[rustica.livejournal.com]

Lovely :)

[overconvergent.livejournal.com]

I remember once reading this poem in an anthology where the anthologist said that, if this poem didn't have the name of the author at the bottom, you'd never guess who had written it.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

I reckon that very little of Kipling's work (which I like a great deal) is what people rather oddly describe as 'Kiplingesque'.

I am maybe influenced by knowing this poem from childhood, but I think it's very much in keeping with his 'English' works, such as Puck of Pook's Hill.

[arda-unmarred.livejournal.com]

Yes, I was just thinking that! (about Puck of Pook's Hill I mean).

[muuranker.livejournal.com]

This reminds me so much of Penelope Lively's _The Driftway_ (a children's book). Let me foist it on you ...
Not that I think for a minute that Lively was even inspired by Kipling - her road is still there, if no longer the main way between Banbury and Northampton.
But, like Kipling, she works with ideas of change, the past, limited vision, and the English countryside using 'the road through the woods' as the anchor.

As to never guessing the author ... I wouldn't have thought that Penelope Lively might have taken a turn to verse... I would have located this with other poets of the 'twilight' years - usually associated with the first world war, but actually there for decades before (as David Doughan's paper - ref. here when I think where it's been published - shows). And while Kipling is sometimes maligned as a gung-ho champion of colonial practice ...

[muuranker.livejournal.com]

... (is there a limit on comment words???) ... in fact he is (also? - discuss at our leisure) one of this group - indeed, I think Kipling's colonial works are also part of this. I must re-read Kim and the Jungle Book and Barrack-room Ballads (et al) before being able to say more ... but from rememberance: while the "long, withdrawing roar" of a sea of faith (in a landscape) is not as loud in Dehli as it is on Dover Beach, nevertheless it's there.

[jane-somebody.livejournal.com]

There is a limit on comment words (or rather, I think) characters, but it is quite a bit longer than that.

Thanks for the book rec, that sounds like one to look out for.

[estiel.livejournal.com]

Lovely. Very English. And very like Kipling. Tolkien liked it, too, I'll bet. Perhaps the road is seen now as a mere "shimmer in the grass." At twilight.

[jane-somebody.livejournal.com]

This is indeed a lovely poem, one of my big box of favourites, and one I tend to associate mood/story-wise with Walter de la Mare's 'The Listeners'. I am interested as to what prompted you to post it on LJ?

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

Someone else on LJ posted a poem, which made me think of this one - but I can't now remember who it was, or what the other poem was!