(+) Old Lost Road
They shut the road through the woods
Seventy years ago
Weather and rain have undone it again,
And now you would never know
There was once a road through the woods
Before they planted the trees
It is underneath the coppice and heath
And the thin anemones
Only the keeper sees
That, where the ring-dove broods,
And the badgers roll at ease,
There was once a road through the woods
Yet, if you enter the woods
Of a summer evening late
When the night-air cools on the trout-ringed pools
Where the otter whistles his mate,
They fear not men in the woods,
Because they see so few
You will hear the beat of a horse's feet,
And the swish of a skirt in the dew
Steadily cantering through
The misty solitudes,
As though they perfectly knew
The old lost road through the woods
But there is no road through the woods
They fear not men in the woods,
Because they see so few
They fear not men in the woods,
Because they see so few
Because they see so few
They fear not men in the woods
They fear not men in the woods