Poems (Mary Coleridge)/Poem 164

CLXIV "CUT IT DOWN?"
By a dim road, o'ergrown with dry thin grass,A little straggling, wild, wind-beaten treeStood, like a sentry, where no feet might pass,And storm-swept by the sea.
What was the secret of that lonely place?Had some accursèd thing gone by this way,Leaving the horror of his evil faceOn leaf and bough and spray?
I know not. But the very sunbeams tookThe darkness of the gnarled and twisted stem;The summer air those wrinkled leaves forsookNor ever played in them.