Nine Thorny Thickets

(album: Sea Shells - 1957)

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 riched fields, down slopes that were soggy
Over stubble and furrow, with stumble and sorrow
Through nine thorny thickets by ruined old forts
To the brow of the mountain

And missing the box 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 done 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 block my good acts
On the face of the stone