BEWITCHED

Why do I babble of bitter chills —

And icy trees — and snowy fallows?

Why do I shudder as twilight spills

A ghostly gray and the bent moon sallows

The moor with her wicked flame?

Why do the gibbering croons of the hag

In her hut by the wood

Go muttering, muttering in my blood —

Till the hoot of an owl

On the snag of a tomb

Breaks out of the gloom

Like the wail of a witch's name?

Ugh, it is drawing my feet away —

The road's gone! the moonlet's sunken!

What shall I do if it comes to fray

With fiends invisible, wild and drunken —

Fiends on a churchless fell!

Ha, is it cracking of ice in the bog

That is clutching my throat,

Or devils gnawing the widow's shoat?

By the Cross of the Christ,

There's a fog that is black

As — U-r-r!— at my back!—

They are dragging me... down to... hell!