With gnarled, fantastic gestures, lame and old.
Deep in a hollow, where some cabin lay,
A lamplit window, like an eye of gold,
Glared, winked and closed—or was't an Elfin ray,
A jack-o'-lanthorn gleam, lost on a wild wood way?
II
Still I held onward through the ugly night;
Breast-deep in thistles, all their ghostly heads
Kinked close with wet; through the bedraggled plight