The Gorse

In dream, again within the clean, cold hell     Of glazed and aching silence he was trapped;     And, closing in, the blank walls of his cell     Crushed stifling on him ... when the bracken snapped,     Caught in his clutching fingers; and he lay     Awake upon his back among the fern,     With free eyes travelling the wide blue day,     Unhindered, unremembering; while a burn     Tinkled and gurgled somewhere out of sight,     Unheard of him; till suddenly aware     Of its cold music, shivering in the light,     He raised himself, and with far-ranging stare     Looked all about him: and with dazed eyes wide     Saw, still as in a numb, unreal dream,     Black figures scouring a far hill-side,     With now and then a sunlit rifle's gleam;     And knew the hunt was hot upon his track:     Yet hardly seemed to mind, somehow, just then ...     But kept on wondering why they looked so black     On that hot hillside, all those little men     Who scurried round like beetles - twelve, all told ...     He counted them twice over; and began     A third time reckoning them, but could not hold     His starved wits to the business, while they ran     So brokenly, and always stuck at 'five' ...     And 'One, two, three, four, five,' a dozen times     He muttered ... 'Can you catch a fish alive?'     Sang mocking echoes of old nursery rhymes     Through the strained, tingling hollow of his head.     And now, almost remembering, he was stirred     To pity them; and wondered if they'd fed     Since he had, or if, ever since they'd heard     Two nights ago the sudden signal-gun     That raised alarm of his escape, they too     Had fasted in the wilderness, and run     With nothing but the thirsty wind to chew,     And nothing in their bellies but a fill     Of cold peat-water, till their heads were light ...     The crackling of a rifle on the hill     Rang in his ears: and stung to headlong flight,     He started to his feet; and through the brake     He plunged in panic, heedless of the sun     That burned his cropped head to a red-hot ache     Still racked with crackling echoes of the gun.     Then suddenly the sun-enkindled fire     Of gorse upon the moor-top caught his eye:     And that gold glow held all his heart's desire,     As, like a witless, flame-bewildered fly,     He blundered towards the league-wide yellow blaze,     And tumbled headlong on the spikes of bloom;     And rising, bruised and bleeding and adaze,     Struggled through clutching spines; the dense, sweet fume     Of nutty, acrid scent like poison stealing     Through his hot blood; the bristling yellow glare     Spiking his eyes with fire, till he went reeling,     Stifled and blinded, on - and did not care     Though he were taken - wandering round and round,     'Jerusalem the Golden' quavering shrill,     Changing his tune to 'Tommy Tiddler's Ground':     Till, just a lost child on that dazzling hill,     Bewildered in a glittering golden maze     Of stinging scented fire, he dropped, quite done,     A shrivelling wisp within a world ablaze     Beneath a blinding sky, one blaze of sun.