O silent wood, I enter thee With a heart so full of misery For all the voices from the trees And the ferns that cling about my knees. In thy darkest shadow let me sit When the grey owls about thee flit; There will I ask of thee a boon, That I may not faint or die or swoon. Gazing through the gloom like one Whose life and hopes are also done, Frozen like a thing of stone I sit in thy shadow ? but not alone. Can God bring back the day when we two stood Beneath the clinging trees in that dark wood?