Poem of the Day: ‘The Way through the Woods’

Once or twice a decade, someone makes the case for Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936), having rediscovered his depth and skill. And fairly so, for his was a talent that will not be buried under either the bombastic recitation of some of his devotees or the sneer of all of his detractors. In “The Way through the Woods,” he uses three- and four-foot lines, with an irregular rhyme scheme and echoes of the French forms that use repeated elements. (The phrase “through the woods” ends seven of the poem’s 25 lines.) And what starts as a little nature poem about the woods reclaiming an abandoned road becomes by the end a strange little invocation of ghosts and a glimpse of a mystical world.