For the storm trapped him ere he left the town
Loaded with our week's victuals: the slime clung
And licked and clawed and chewed the clogged
dragging wheels
Till they sunk right to the axle: Saul, sodden and
vexed,
Like fury smote the mules' mouths, pulling but
sweat
From his drowned hair and theirs, while the
thunder knocked
And all the air yawned water, falling water,
And the light cart was water, like a wrecked raft,
And all seemed like a forest under the ocean.
Sudden the lightning flashed upon a figure
Moving as a man moves in the slipping mud,
Singing, but not as a man sings, through the
storm,
Which could not drown his sounds. Saul bawled
"Hi! Hi!"
And the man loomed, naked, vast, and gripped
the wheels;
Saul fiercely dug from under; he tugged the
wheels;
The mules foamed straining, straining.
Suddenly they went.
Saul and the man leaped in: Saul, miserably sodden,