Joseph Campbell

THE PUCA’S come again,

Who long was hid away

In cave or twilight glen:

Too shy, too proud to play

Under the eye of day.

I saw him dance and skip

But now in the beech wood,

Wild rhymes upon his lip

And laughter in his blood.

I envied him his grip

Upon the sunny mood.

Then altered he his note

To one of weariness:

He shook his hairy coat,

The double of distress,

And cried deep in his throat

For gall and bitterness.

The Puca’s gone again

To sleep his wits away

In cave or twilight glen:

Too shy, too proud to stay

Under the eye of day.

NOTE. The Puca seems essentially an animal spirit. Some derive his name from poc, a he-goat; and speculative persons consider him the father of Shakespeare’s Puck. On solitary mountains and among old ruins he lives, “grown monstrous with much solitude,” and is of the race of the nightmare.—W. B. Yeats, Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry.

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