The huge old oak that the creepers cloak.
She has stood him, gaunt in his battered arms,
In its haunted hollow.—"Be safe from storms,"
She laughed as his cloven casque she placed
On his brow, and his riven shield she braced.
Then sat and talked to the forest flowers
Through the lonely term of the day's pale hours.
And stared and whispered and smiled and wept,
As nearer and nearer the evening crept.
And lo, when the moon, like a great gold bloom