THE FEUD

Rocks, trees and rocks; and down a mossy stone

The murmuring ooze and trickle of a stream

Through bushes, where the mountain spring lies lone,—

A gleaming cairngorm where the shadows dream,—

And one wild road winds like a saffron seam.

Here sang the thrush, whose pure, mellifluous note

Dropped golden sweetness on the fragrant June;

Here cat — and blue-bird and wood-sparrow wrote

Their presence on the silence with a tune;

And here the fox drank‘ neath the mountain moon.

Frail ferns and dewy mosses and dark brush,—

Impenetrable briers, deep and dense,

And wiry bushes,— brush, that seemed to crush

The struggling saplings with its tangle, whence

Sprawled out the ramble of an old rail-fence.

A wasp buzzed by; and then a butterfly

In orange and amber, like a floating flame;

And then a man, hard-eyed and very sly,

Gaunt-cheeked and haggard and a little lame,

With an old rifle, down the mountain came.

He listened, drinking from a flask he took

Out of the ragged pocket of his coat;

Then all around him cast a stealthy look;

Lay down; and watched an eagle soar and float,

His fingers twitching at his hairy throat.

The shades grew longer; and each Cumberland height

Loomed, framed in splendours of the dolphin dusk.

Around the road a horseman rode in sight;

Young, tall, blonde-bearded. Silent, grim, and brusque,

He in the thicket aimed — The gun ran husk;

And echoes barked among the hills and made

Repeated instants of the shot's distress.—

Then silence — and the trampled bushes swayed;—

Then silence, packed with murder and the press

Of distant hoofs that galloped riderless.