The Wound
I climbed to the crest,
And, fog-festooned,
The sun lay west
Like a crimson wound:
Like that wound of mine
Of which none knew,
For I’d given no sign
That it pierced me through.
This poem is in the public domain.
I
They throw in Drummer Hodge, to rest
Uncoffined—just as found:
His landmark is a kopje-crest
That breaks the veldt around;
And foreign constellations west
Each night above his mound.
II
Young Hodge the Drummer never knew—
Fresh from his Wessex home—
The meaning of the broad Karoo,
The Bush, the dusty loam,
And why uprose to nightly view
Strange stars amid the gloam.
Every branch big with it,
Bent every twig with it;
Every fork like a white web-foot;
I went by the Druid stone
That stands in the garden white and lone,
And I stopped and looked at the shifting shadows
That at some moments there are thrown
From the tree hard by with a rhythmic swing,