“Trackway and Camp and City lost, / Salt Marsh where now is corn”

[larryhammer]

For Poetry Monday, more Kipling, with a more haunting trace of the past:

The Way Through the Woods, Rudyard Kipling

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,
    And the thin anemones.
    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.


First published in 1910 in Rewards and Fairies, the sequel to Puck of Pook’s Hill, as the endnote to “Marklake Witches.” It was probably written in 1899, shortly before his daughter’s death at age eight, for a friend of his daughter after the two had a day in the woods alone where they had an experience they attributed to ghosts. I love the subtle effect of adding that extra line in the second stanza.

---L.

Subject quote from Puck’s Song, from “Weland’s Sword,” Puck of Pook’s Hill, Rudyard Kipling.

Comments

[cmcmck]

Love this one!

[larryhammer]

I assumed that. You also like what's next in the queue.

[mme_n_b]

That sounds fascinating :)

[graydon]

This is one of the "kid's book, you say?" components of Puck of Pook's Hill.

(A best-effort faithful adaptation ("classic Victorian children's stories!") to visual media would be exceedingly challenging but so interesting just for the freakout.)

[larryhammer]

See also Kim for similar moments of eye-brow-raising. And for that matter Stalkey & Co. He was of a generation that believed that children can comprehend (and are interested in) more than many adults admit.

I think an adaptation would have to be episodic, either that or focusing only two or three threads of the linked stories, ones where someone from the past reappears in successive stories. Contenders include Sir Richard and Parnesius -- which, hmm, are among the first couple introduced -- plus of course woven through with the fairy lore ending with "Dymchurch Flit".

[graydon]

I would generally want to do an episode or two or three per story and keep the interstitial bits; lots of people out there who could read poetry effectively. (Or who might turn something like The Song of the Red War Boat into a music video.)

This would be a very large project, but since it is entirely fantastical that part is OK. :)

[mme_n_b]

It would be nice if K. Briggs did this.

[shewhomust]

I learned this at school half a century ago, and can still recite chunks of it. You let that Kipling into your brain, you won't get him out in a hurry!

[larryhammer]

He was an excellent wordsmith and yarnspinner. Sometimes problematic, but always the craftsman.