Nine Thorny Thickets

All this I was doing over a man

In loneliness going across the bare moor

And through the blind night in the pitch of the darkness

Lost from the high road

Through many ridged fields, down slopes that were soggy

Over stubble and furrow with stumble and sorrow

Through nine thorny thickets ruined old forts

To the brow of the mountain

And missing the bogs and their green habitation

Whose hateful companions circled around me

A fighter betrayed in the thick of the battle

A girl in a jail, a girl in a Jail

But worse than the fogs of all desolation

Were the spirits of evil circling around me

And my crossing and praying

My charming and rhyme of little avail

This took a long time but at last I looked up

And there were the stars

Like cherries they were in the orchard of night

All yellow and red, all shining and bright

The sparks of the bonfires for seven dear saints

The gems of the host and the harness of heaven

The pickets of embers whose orbits are long

And wind cannot take them, wind cannot take them

I stopped in my tracks, look you, I said

This is over and one, he has got to be told

God forgive me the telling, I'll travel no more

To the door of his dwelling I'll travel no more

Through any such goings nor blunt my good axe

On the face of the stone