Iv

Shuddering I stopped, for, with my feet so caked With clay, damp-dragging, safer were the graves, Crowding that vista of the wood,--which raked My face with burrs,--than, walking towards the waves, To feel earth slip away; the architraves Of darkness plunge me downward to some pit Of wallow and of water.--Madder knaves Than I have stood thus in a fever-fit Of heart and brain and shuddered from the brink of it.