Mammoths
Up and down the high woods, up and down the low,
Must 'a' gone a-hunting morts of years ago;
When the beaver whistled, when the aurochs ran,
Must 'a' been a-hunting when the world began.
For I half remember (tusk on kingly tusk)
How I've seen the mammoths moving through the dusk:
Mammoths all a-marching, terrible to see,
Through an awful oak-wood glooming ghoulishly.
Shadows huge and hairy, as the day was done,
Somehow I remember, walking one by one,
Bulls grotesque and solemn, pulling boughs in halves;
Running 'neath their mothers, little idiot calves.
Lumping through the oak-swamp, vast and dim and grey,
I have watched the mammoths pass at dusk of day;
Through the quaking hollow, through the tree-trunks stark,
Gleams of mighty ivory breaking up the dark.
That's the way I dream it, that's the way I know,
Must 'a' gone a-hunting, years and years ago:
For I've seen the mammoths — 'tisn't you that could —
Moving like cathedrals through a dreadful wood.