A.C. Benson: The Ant-Heap

High in the woodland, on the mountain side,
    I ponder, half a golden afternoon,
Storing deep strength to battle with the tide
    I must encounter soon.

Absorbed, inquisitive, alert, irate,
    The wiry wood-ants run beneath the pines,
And bristle if a careless footfall grate
    Among their travelled lines.

With prey unwieldy, slain in alien lands,
    When shadows fall aslant, laden they come,
Where, piled of red-fir needles, guarded stands
    Their dry and rustling dome.

They toil for what they know not; rest they shun;
    They nip the soft intruder; when they die,
They grapple pain and fate, and ask from none
    The pity they deny.


From Lyrics (1895). Benson (1862-1925) wrote "Land of Hope and Glory" and was a housemaster at Eton; this might sound like the archetypal late Victorian. But he suffered devastating depression ("the tide I must encounter soon") and tried to express it in a way the Victorian establishment could understand. Not the only poem to correlate a swarm of ants and a darkness within.