The Feud

Rocks, trees and rocks; and down a mossy stone The murmuring ooze and trickle of a stream Through brambles, where the mountain spring lies lone,-- A gleaming cairngorm where the shadows dream,-- And one wild road winds like a saffron seam.

Here sang the thrush, whose pure, mellifluous note Dropped golden sweetness on the fragrant June; Here cat-and blue-bird and wood-sparrow wrote Their presence on the silence with a tune; And here the fox drank ’neath the mountain moon.

Frail ferns and dewy mosses and dark brush,-- Impenetrable briers, deep and dense, And wiry bushes;--brush, that seemed to crush The struggling saplings with its tangle, whence Sprawled out the ramble of an old rail-fence.

A wasp buzzed by; and then a butterfly In orange and amber, like a floating flame; And then a man, hard-eyed and very sly, Gaunt-cheeked and haggard and a little lame, With an old rifle, down the mountain came.

He listened, drinking from a flask he took Out of the ragged pocket of his coat; Then all around him cast a stealthy look; Lay down; and watched an eagle soar and float, His fingers twitching at his hairy throat.

The shades grew longer; and each Cumberland height Loomed, framed in splendors of the dolphin dusk. Around the road a horseman rode in sight; Young, tall, blond-bearded. Silent, grim, and brusque, He in the thicket aimed--Quick, harsh, then husk,

The echoes barked among the hills and made Repeated instants of the shot’s distress.-- Then silence--and the trampled bushes swayed:-- Then silence, packed with murder and the press Of distant hoofs that galloped riderless.