Prologue
In sudden cloud that blotting distance out
Confused the compass of the traveller’s mind,
Biassed his course, three times from the hill’s crest
Trying to descend but with no track to follow,
Nor visible landmark—three times he had struck
The same sedged pool of steaming desolation,
The same black monolith rearing up before it.
This third time then he paused to recognize
The Witches’ Cauldron only known before
By hearsay, fly-like on whose rim he had crawled
Three times and three times dipped to climb again
Its uncouth sides, so to go crawling on.
By falls of scree, moss-mantled slippery rock,
Wet bracken, drunken gurgling watercourses,
He escaped limping at last, and broke the circuit
Travelling down and down; but smooth descent
Interrupted by new lakes and ridges,
Sprawling unmortared walls of boulder granite,
Marshes; one arm hung bruised where he had fallen,
Blood welled a sticky trickle from his cheek,
Mist gathering in his eye-brows ran full beads
Down to his eyes, making them smart and blur.
At last he blundered on some shepherd’s hut—
He thought, the hut took pity and appeared—
With mounds of peat and welcome track of wheels
Which he now followed to a broad green road
Running from right to left; but still at fault
Whether he stood this side or that of the hill,
The mist being still on all, with little pause
He chose the easier way, the downward way.
Legs were dog-tired already, only the road,
The slow descent with some relief of guidance
Maintained his shambling five miles to the hour
Coloured with day dreams. Then a finger post
Broke through the mist, pointing into his face,
But when he stopped to read gave him no comfort.
Seventeen miles to—somewhere, God knows what!
The paint was weathered to a mere acrostic
Which cold unfocussed eyes could never read—
But jerking a derisive thumb behind it
Up a rough stream-wet path “The Witches’ Cauldron
One Mile.” Only a mile
For two good hours of stumbling steeplechase!
There was a dead snake by some humorous hand
Twined on the pointing finger; far away
A bull roared hoarsely, but all else was mist.
Then anger came upon him, in which heat
He fell into deep thought and rhymes came strung
Faster than speech might have kept pace with them.
The Snake, the Bull!
What laughter was it, ended
His allegory and startled the graceful hare
That secure in the mist came leaping down towards him?
Witch in disguise, emissary of witches?
Swiftly he takes a stone up, hurls it at her,
Chases her, bawling childish angry threats;
She screams. Now with red shame sorrow floods back
Making his journey by twice three miles longer
As though once revisiting the witches,
Those unclean—it stood symbol in his mind
For what, but what? He never wished her harm—
She being a hare and having innocent eyes—
It was her fault for blundering on him there.
He never wished her harm, she should have known
His angry fit, frustration, weariness
Breaking a gentler mood. With slackening steps
He once more takes the homeward road, that is,
If it does lead home; it’s making uphill now
And narrowing sadly. That fool finger-post
Had only snakes to brag about and witches,
And the bull roared no very helpful threat.