In frozen fields, and fallow, we were
Haunting a copse like a hunted soldier
When our father called me and my brother
And sent a scattering of ravens across the sky.
And we walked, and watched the winter sun
Between the boughs of a dying elm,
The one eye watching in weary return
Our return from our fun to the house of my father;
And we went, and we heard the hard ground beaten
With the rythymly pacing of our fewfelt feet
Which was new to the earth in those our days
Of rime, and hard furrows yet not wetted with dew.
Firstwinter frost under murdered skies;
Long shadows lain after shallow day light;
And high up on the wytch elm I could see
An óther man tangled in its boughs, straining, screaming, silently.