Turned up in terror as the owl goes by:
On softest feathers of silence overhead
Flits the dim shadow of the ancient dread,
Hooded and vague, the cruelty of his beak
Bent on old lustful mysteries.—A squeak—
A scuffle—beating of wings—and in the lane
Silence—and the old wrong is done again,
That was ere Adam; the triumphant heart
And the defeated, each one doomed to his part,
They play it through, the old tragedy where one