BRYCE SNAILSFOOT'S ADVERTISEMENT

Poor sinners whom the snake deceives,
Are fain to cover them with leaves.
Zetland hath no leaves, 't is true,
Because that trees are none, or few;
But we have flax and taits of woo',
For linen cloth, and wadmaal blue;
And we have many of foreign knacks
Of finer waft than woo' or flax.
Ye gallanty Lambmas lads appear,
And bring your Lambmas sisters here,
Bryce Snailsfoot spares not cost or care,
To pleasure every gentle pair.

THE SAME, AT THE MEETING WITH MINNA

Thou so needful, yet so dread,
With cloudy crest, and wing of red;
Thou, without whose genial breath
The North would sleep the sleep of death;
Who deign'st to warm the cottage hearth,
Yet hurlst proud palaces to earth;
Brightest, keenest of the Powers,
Which form and rule this world of ours,
With my rhyme of Runic, I
Thank thee for thy agency.
Old Reimkennar, to thy art
Mother Hertha sends her part;
She, whose gracious bounty gives
Needful food for all that lives.

NORNA'S INCANTATIONS

Champion, famed for warlike toil,
Art thou silent, Ribolt Troil?
Sand, and dust, and pebbly stones,
Are leaving bare thy giant bones.
Who dared touch the wild bear's skin
Ye slumbered on, while life was in?
A woman now, or babe, may come
And cast the covering from thy tomb.

Yet be not wrathful, Chief, nor blight
Mine eyes or ears with sound or sight!
I come not with unhallowed tread,
To wake the slumbers of the dead,
Or lay thy giant relics bare;

HALCRO'S VERSES

And you shall deal the funeral dole;
Ay, deal it, mother mine,
To weary body and to heavy soul,
The white bread and the wine.

And you shall deal my horses of pride;
Ay, deal them, mother mine;
And you shall deal my lands so wide,
And deal my castles nine;

But deal not vengeance for the deed,
And deal not for the crime;

CLEVELAND'S SONGS

Love wakes and weeps
While Beauty sleeps:
O, for Music's softest numbers,
To prompt a theme
For Beauty's dream,
Soft as the pillow of her slumbers!

Through groves of palm
Sigh gales of balm,
Fire-flies on the air are wheeling;
While through the gloom
Comes soft perfume,
The distant beds of flowers revealing.

O wake and live!
No dream can give
A shadowed bliss, the real excelling;
No longer sleep,

THE FISHERMEN'S SONG

Farewell, merry maidens, to song and to laugh,
For the brave lads of Westra are bound to the Haaf;
And we must have labor, and hunger, and pain,
Ere we dance with the maids of Dunrossness again.

For now, in our trim boats of Noroway deal,
We must dance on the waves, with the porpoise and seal;
The breeze it shall pipe, so it pipe not too high,
And the gull be our songstress whene'er she flits by.

Sing on, my brave bird, while we follow, like thee,

NORNA'S VERSES

For leagues along the watery way,
Through gulf and stream my course has been;
The billows know my Runie lay,
And smooth their crests to silent green.

The billows know my Runic lay,
The gulf grows smooth, the stream is still;
But human hearts, more wild than they,
Know but the rule of wayward will.

One hour is mine, in all the year,
To tell my woes, and one alone;

SONG OF HAROLD HARFAGER

The sun is rising dimly red,
The wind is wailing low and dread;
From his cliff the eagle sallies,
Leaves the wolf his darksome valleys;
In the mist the ravens hover,
Peep the wild dogs from the cover,
Screaming, croaking, baying, yelling,
Each in his wild accents telling,
" Soon we feast on dead and dying,
Fair-haired Harold's flag is flying."

Many a crest in air is streaming,
Many a helmet darkly gleaming,
Many an arm the axe uprears,
Doomed to hew the wood of spears.

HALCRO'S SONG

Farewell to Northmaven,
Grey Hillswicke, farewell!
To the calms of thy haven,
The storms on thy fell —
To each breeze that can vary
The mood of thy main,
And to thee, bonny Mary!
We meet not again!

Farewell the wild ferry,
Which Hacon could brave
When the peaks of the Skerry
Were white in the wave.
There 's a maid may look over

Stern eagle of the far north-west,
Thou that bearest in thy grasp the thunderbolt,
Thou whose rushing pinions stir ocean to madness,
Thou the destroyer of herds, thou the scatterer of navies,
Amidst the scream of thy rage,
Amidst the rushing of thy onward wings,
Though thy scream be loud as the cry of a perishing nation,
Though the rushing of thy wings be like the roar of ten thousand waves,
Yet hear, in thine ire and thy haste,
Hear thou the voice of the Reim-kennar.

Thou hast met the pine-trees of Drontheim,