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Love and
forgetting might have carried them
A little further
up the mountain side
With night so near, but not much
further up.
They must have halted soon in any case
With thoughts of a path back, how rough it was
With
rock and washout, and unsafe in darkness;
When they
were halted by a tumbled wall
With barbed-wire
binding. They stood facing this,
Spending what onward
impulse they still had
In One last look the way they
must not go,
On up the failing path, where, if a
stone
Or earthslide moved at night, it moved itself;
No footstep moved it. 'This is all,' they sighed,
Good-night to woods.' But not so; there was more.
A
doe from round a spruce stood looking at them
Across
the wall, as near the wall as they.
She saw them in
their field, they her in hers.
The difficulty of
seeing what stood still,
Like some up-ended boulder
split in two,
Was in her clouded eyes; they saw no
fear there.
She seemed to think that two thus they
were safe.
Then, as if they were something that,
though strange,
She could not trouble her mind with
too long,
She sighed and passed unscared along the
wall.
'This, then, is all. What more is there to
ask?'
But no, not yet. A snort to bid them wait.
A
buck from round the spruce stood looking at them
Across the wall as near the wall as they.
This was an
antlered buck of lusty nostril,
Not the same doe come
back into her place.
He viewed them quizzically with
jerks of head,
As if to ask, 'Why don't you make some
motion?
Or give some sign of life? Because you can't.
I doubt if you're as living as you look.'
Thus till
he had them almost feeling dared
To stretch a
proffering hand -- and a spell-breaking.
Then he too
passed unscared along the wall.
Two had seen two,
whichever side you spoke from.
'This must be all.' It
was all. Still they stood,
A great wave from it going
over them,
As if the earth in one unlooked-for favour
Had made them certain earth returned their love.
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