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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 path through the woods Before they planted the trees. It is underneath the coppice and heath, And the thin anemonies. Only the keeper sees That, where the ringdove 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-ring'd 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. |