The Way Through The Woods (Poem By Rudyard Kipling)

A vivid poetic description of nature reclaiming the earth as our influence fades, and how quickly human works can disappear. Woven in amongst the bucolic imagery of trout-ringed pools and whistling otters is a thread of ambiguity.

Transcript

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 in the thin nemenes.

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.

Reviews

Beautiful, and so happy to be reacquainted with Rudyard ❤️🙏🪷

Thank you 🙏

Beautiful

❤️🌿

Thank you.

Lovely🙏🏻Thank you!🌷❤️🙏🏻

💖💖💖💖💖

Mysterious 🥺

A beautiful, gentle rhythm to the words; a thoughtful poem ❤️