The Forest Bacenis: Variations on Themes From Julius Caesar

HERE the barbarians never raid each other.
The forest intervenes
Of infinite magnitude, — thicket, tangle, vines
Reach from the nearer border to the farther.

And no man knows how far that border lies
Beyond his field, his home;
They have no way of reckoning but time
To measure boundaries.

Intrepid, traveling light, the lone explorer
Finds, right or left, the endless corridor,
The native wall, the dark eternal fortress
Against the threat of war.

So they are safe. They do not fear marauders,
The child enslaved, the virgin taken, grain
Burning at night, the cattle raids, the murders.
They call their lives their own.

Still, looking north or south, sometimes they wonder:
It might be good, they almost think, to dare
Beyond familiar limits, face adventure
More boldly, wander more.

That other land might prove
Richer than theirs, hospitable and friendly,
The girls exciting, they imagine fondly,
Adept at making love.

Or, if they were not welcome, they might enter
With an invading pride, be warriors
With something to remember in the winter
Around their warm and comfortable fires.

They lift their gaze, for one brief restless moment
To where, below the shield, the swords hang crossed;
They breathe in deep, as if to blow the dust
Out of the plume of helmet.

But no. One thing they cannot face, the forest,
Dark, dark, through tangle, vine and thicket groping,
The smell of animals, the undergrowth,
The steaming moisture, rank with every horror.

They grow, at last, too tame for insurrection,
Inbreed, content. They cross no boundary line,
They ask no more of any tribe or nation
Than to be left alone.