From where I sit I see the stars,

And down the chilly floor

The moon between the frozen bars

Is glimmering dim and hour.



Without in many a peaked mound

The glinting snowdrifts lie;

There is no voice or living sound;

The embers slowly die.



Yet some wild thing is in mine ear;

I hold my breath and hark:

Out of the depth I seem to hear

A crying in the dark;



No sound of man or wife or child,

No sound of beast that groans,

Or of the wind that whistles wild,

Or of the tree that moans:



I know not what it is I hear;

I bend my head and hark;

I cannot drive it from mine ear,

That crying in the dark

- Archibald Lampman (1861 – 1899)

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I’m sitting here under a huge willow tree and I can see the stars shining through the leaves. I can also see the bright full moon lighting up this ash and yew forest as if it were daylight. The peaked snow drifts are pushed into miniature mountains against the sides of the old roman road.

I am camped just off the road in a military-issue leather tent, which is not the warmest thing for winter patrol, but it doesn’t leak. The hardest part about garrison duty is that I’m camped on the border of the Saxon shore and I’m all alone. The next closest military camp is half a day’s walk, which is a bit too far if I get into trouble, but I can’t do anything about it.

There is no sound at all, except for the popping of the dying fire. It is as peaceful as peaceful can be in the dark wilderness. Suddenly I hear the strangest sound I’ve ever heard in my life. It sounds like something crying in the dark. It fades and I hold my breath waiting for the sound to repeat itself. It doesn’t sound like anything closely resembling a human, but it sounds like crying. The wind doesn’t even make noise like that. I tell myself that it must be the trees moaning, even though it is starting to make the hairs on my neck stand up.

I stand up and search around my small campsite, peering into the shadows that surround my tent. There is nothing that I can see out in the winter darkness except shadows and moonlight reflecting off the snow. I sit here huddled in my fur-lined cloak for warmth; my back pressed against the willow as I wait for dawn. The beautiful winter night that was has just turned dark and sinister.

Every slight sound makes me jump. All sounds are unidentifiable to me now; I can no longer tell the trees rubbing up against each other from a monster traipsing through the woods. The hairs on the back of my neck are now standing right on end.  The crying in the dark has sounded again, and I sit here and wait unmoving for the horror to end.

“Dawn will soon come,” I keep telling myself over and over like a prayer against the sound pounding upon my ears. I do not know what is out in the winter darkness that keeps crying. I can clearly see the road outlined in the moonlight from my camp, yet I still can not fathom what is making that sound, or where it is coming from.

I can feel my gut cramp and the bark of the willow being pressed into my spine as the sound repeats itself once again. The sweat of fear is chilling me as it runs down my back and soaks my shirt. This is what all men of the Island fear: the returning of the Saxons. I don’t want to die young. I know all about the glories of battle and the face of war. I’ve seen it too many times in my short life, and lived through it to die of fear on a winter’s night huddled here in the dark, listening with all my might to a howling sound that won’t leave my ears.