Road Through The Woods

This is a famous poem by Rudyard Kipling set to a traditional folk tune. The arrangement is new in the style of the Byrds with rolling Rickenbacker backing and lead 12-string guitars.

Lyrics:
[E] They shut the [B7] road through [E] the woods
[A] Seventy years [E] ago.
[A] Weather and rain have [E] undone it again,
[F#m] And now you would never [B7] know

There was once a road through the woods
Before they planted the trees.
It is underneath the coppice and heath,
And the thin anemones.

Only the keeper sees
That, where the ring-dove broods,
And the badgers roll at ease,
There was once a road through the woods.

BREAK

Yet, if you enter the woods
Of a summer evening late,
When the night-air cools on the trout-ringed pools
Where the otter whistles his mate,

(They fear not men in the woods,
Because they see so few.)
You will hear the beat of a horse’s feet,
And the swish of a skirt in the dew,

Steadily cantering through
The misty solitudes,
As though they perfectly knew
The old lost road through the woods.

They shut the road through the woods
Seventy years ago.
Weather and rain have undone it again,
And now you would never know