That beast and man were brother

A poem (about a man hiding in a cave on a rainy night and a wolf joining him) was a part of my elder siblings' curriculum which was, unfortunately, dropped when it came new one under which I was taught. Almost twenty years have passed, but a line from the poem and the image with it (drawn by an artist I no longer remember) persists in my memory even today. The image showed a crouching man and a wolf next to him, in darkness, under a tree.

And the line was 'the beast and man were brother'.

It was carved on my young brain then and now, whenever I see or hear about animals bonding with people, I remember this line. A bit of search on the Net helped me to pinpoint the poem. The title is 'A night with a wolf' written by Bayard Taylor.

Here is the full poem:

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High up on the lonely mountains,
Where the wild men watched and waited;
Wolves in the forest and bears in the bush,
And I on my path belated.

The rain and the night together
Came down, and the wind came after,
Bending the props of the pine tree roof,
And snapping many a rafter.

I crept along in the darkness,
Stunned, and bruised, and blinded;
Crept to a fir with thick set boughs
And a sheltering rock behind it.

There, from the blowing and raining,
Crouching, I sought to hide me.
Something rustled; two green eyes shone;
And a wolf lay down beside me!

His wet fur pressed against me;
Each of us warmed the other;
Each of us felt, in the stormy dark,
That beast and man were brother.

And when the falling forest
No longer crashed in warning,
Each of us went from our hiding place
Forth in the wild, wet morning.
-------

Little did Mr. Taylor (1825-1878) know that one line of his poem would haunt a kid for twenty years till he finally finds it over the big Net.

That, gentle ladies and men, is the beauty of words.