Hark, how the rain is pouring
over the roof, in the pitch-black night, and the wind in the woods a-roaring!
Hush, my Darling, and listen,
then pay for the story with kisses;
Father was lost in the pitch-black night,
in just such a storm as this is!
High up on the lonely mountains,
where the wild men watched and waited;
Wolves in the forest, and Bears in the bush,
and I on my Path belated.
The rain and the night together
came down, and the wind came after,
bending the props on the pine-tree roof,
and snapping many a rafter.
I crept along in the darkness,
stunned, and bruised, and blinded,
crept to a fir with thick-set boughs,
and a sheltering rock behind it.
There, from the blowing and raining,
crouching, I sought to hide me:
something rustled, two green eyes shone,
and a wolf lay down beside me.
Little one, be not frightened;
I and the wolf together,
side by side, through the long, long night
hid from the awful weather.
His wet fur pressed against me;
each of us warmed the other;
each of us felt, in the stormy dark,
that beast and man was Brother.
And whenthe falling forest no longer crashed in warning,
each of us went from our hiding-place forth in the wild, wet morning.
Darling, kiss me in payment!
Hark, how the wind is roarng;
Father's house is a better place
when the stormy rain is pouring!
Bayard Taylor
Rewritten by: Christina
