I have come here fleeing I know not what
Fate. I know not what I fled from
Then in the moonlight, in the glass-gray air
Running in moonlight, in the gray light
Of grass-wet air. Then in the thickets I heard them
Scattering light feet, running, spattering
Leaves and crashing — as though they were hunting —
Branches. Naked shadows. Pulsating hoofbeats.
But the thickets dark. There was seen
Neither horn, nor uprearing haunches, nor even
The long low lope of a hound crossing the glade
And leaping with deep teeth into a neck.
It may be it was not a death I heard there.
But here where I have come, to die,
Or merely not to die, is the only question.
What have I fled from? What do I ask for?
I wake to my shame and the wood is lonely.