Text of the Poem

Outside the house an ash-tree hung its terrible whips,
And at night when the wind arose, the lash of the tree  
Shrieked and slashed the wind, as a ship’s  
Weird rigging in a storm shrieks hideously.  
  
Within the house two voices arose in anger, a slender lash
Whistling delirious rage, and the dreadful sound  
Of a thick lash booming and bruising, until it drowned  
The other voice in a silence of blood, ’neath the noise of the ash.