There are strange voices calling on the moor
That stir my heart and wake an echo there.
What is it knows the hidden springs of me?
What is it answers from within me here?
The heath is blood-red in the sun’s last look,
The wind begins to wake again, and I,
Half in a dream, remember the unknown,
And blindly feel some ancient mystery.
Was some old battle fought upon the moor?
Down in the hollow sets a tide of pain
And on the height a savage triumph swells,
And dies away, and louder grows again.
Out in the open places courage is,
But in the darkness of the wood I hear,
From out the closest of the undergrowth.
The sudden-indrawn breath of hidden fear.
By the North Thicket is a savage place,
A man might well a lust of vengeance sate
There, holding some lithe throat, watching the life
Die slowly from the burning eyes of hate.
And by the thorn what dreadful thing has passed?
The air is quick with bitterness and shame:
What dark compulsion, born of earlier sin,
Laid a fresh stain upon a tarnished name?
There are strange doings here upon the moor.
My spirit answers to the unseen hands,
And my soul knows the unseen multitudes
That press upon me in these empty lands.
And this my life, that is in houses pent,
And toils in towns to win its bitter bread,
And goes soft-shod about the sheltered streets,
Wakes to its own among the unknown dead.
(Ethel Clifford)
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