Soliloquy inspired by “In the Woods Somewhere” — By Emily Gillette

 

HOZIER

            I’ll be with you anon.                                                              [Exeunt all except Hozier]

                                                            —They do not know.

            ‘Tis a music few save I could claim to hear.

            I’faith, I hope I may recount these fears:

Oh, how weary I became in th’ heat

And sweat that coiled about my cruelest dreams—

In that fevered state ‘twas oft I spoke of thee.

When I awakened, though my senses still

Were clouded by a fever’s ling’ring grasp,

I knew, i’ faith, the night would hum to me.

I rais’d myself in the shrouds of the moon

With legs which hardly bore my weight beneath,

And prayed my mind hath not corrupted me.

But soft! — A noise which filled the air anon

And chilled the blood, for then I held in awe:

‘twas something abroach in the woods somewhere.

The voice—a lady’s?—and of such alarm,

I ran to with expedience but empty arms.

‘twas but a minute ere I found the thing,

A fox, the quaking figure yet alive.

Warm still, but a quiet breath he releas’d.

Its wounds ran deep, his hind’s bone glistened white.

The brutal violence of it all made weak

A fairer stomach, thus I laid a stone

across his brow to end his suffering.

As there I stood, I wonder’d at the cause:

What creature’s teeth could lay a wound so cruelly?

Soft—the thought doth turn my ear toward some thing

The dark could not bewray. And there ‘t was:

A flash of golden eyes, a gnarl, then ‘t lunged!

Ere I could breathe, I turned my back and fled.

A deer, mere prey had I thusly been reduc’d

My legs brought me apace, but, Oh! My heart

forgot that I would fain return to thee.

Alone, I clutched my life and thought to cry,

For what abhorrent sin must I aby?

As mere fingers ‘gainst solid stones, I do resist—

Marry, a love condemned, yet love persists.

How many years must pass whence I fare

With fear and dreams which now I nightly bear?

And how, to all, of my sanity must I convince,

When the woods, their shadows, loom ever closer since?