Classic Poem

The wild wind moaned: fast waned the light:
Dense cloud-wrack gloomed the front of night:
The moorland cries were cries of pain
Green, red, or broad and glaring white
The lightnings flashed athwart the main.

The sound and fury of the waves,
Upon the rocks, among the caves,
Boomed inland from the thunderous strand:
Mayhap the dead heard in their graves
The tumult fill the hollow land.

With savage pebbly rush and roar
The billows swept the echoing shore
In clouds of spume and swirling spray:
The wild wings of the tempest bore
The salt rheum to the Haunted Brae,

Upon the Haunted Brae (where none
Would linger in the noontide sun)
Michael the Wizard rode apace:
Wildly he rode where all men shun,
With madness gleaming on his face.

Loud, loud he laugh'd whene'er he saw
The lightnings split on Lammer-Law,
“Blood, bride, and bier the auld rune saith
Hell's wind tae me ae nicht sall blaw,
The nicht I ride unto my death!”

Across the Haunted Brae he fled,
And mock'd and jeer'd the shuddering pead;
Wan white the horse that he bestrode,
The fire-flaughts stricken as it sped
Flashed thro' the black mirk of the road.

And even as his race he ran,
A shade pursued the fleeing man,
A white and ghastly shade it was;
“Like saut sea-spray across wet san'
Or wind abune the moonlit grass!—

“Like saut sea-spray it follows me,
Or wind o'er grass—so fast's I flee:
In vain I shout, and laugh, and call
The thing betwixt me and the sea
God kens it is my ain lost saul!”

Down, down the Haunted Brae, and past
The verge of precipices vast
And eyries where the eagles screech
By great pines swaying in the blast,
Through woods of moaning larch and beech

On, on by moorland glen and stream,
Past lonely lochs where ospreys scream,
Past marsh-lands where no sound is heard,
The rider and his white horse gleam,
And, aye behind, that dreadful third.

Wild and more wild the wild wind blew,
But Michael Scott the rein ne'er drew
Loud and more loud his laughter shrill,
His wild and mocking laughter, grew,
In dreadful cries 'twixt hill and hill.

At last the great high road he gained,
And now with whip and voice he strained
To swifter flight the gleaming mare;
Afar ahead the fierce sleet rained
Upon the ruin'd House of Stair.

Then Michael Scott laughed long and loud:
“Whan shone the mune ahint yon cloud
I kent the Towers that saw my birth—
Lang, lang, sall wait my cauld grey shroud,
Lang cauld and weet my bed o' earth!”

But as by Stair he rode full speed
His horse began to pant and bleed:
“Win hame, win hame, my bonnie mare,
Win hame if thou would'st rest and feed,
Win hame, we're nigh the House of Stair!”

But with a shrill heart-bursten yell
The white horse stumbled, plunged, and fell,
And loud a summoning voice arose,
“Is't White-Horse Death that rides frae Hell,
Or Michael Scott that hereby goes?”

“Ah, Lord of Stair, I ken ye weel!
Avaunt, or I your saul sall steal,
An' send ye howling through the wood
A wild man-wolf-aye, ye maun reel
An' cry upon your Holy Rood!”

Swift swept the sword within the shade,
Swift was the flash the blue steel made,
Swift was the downward stroke and rash—
But, as though leven-struck, the blade
Fell splintered earthward with a crash.

With frantic eyes Lord Stair out-peered
When Michael Scott laughed loud and jeered:—
“Forth fare ye now, ye've gat lang room
Ah, by my saul thou'lt dree thy weird!
Begone, were-wolf, till the day o' doom!”

A shrill scream pierced the lonely place;
A dreadful change came o'er the face;
The head, with bristled hair, swung low;
Michael the Wizard turned and fled
And laughed a mocking laugh of woe.

And through the wood there stole and crept,
And through the wood there raced and leapt,
A thing in semblance of a man;
An awful look its wild eyes kept
As howling through the night it ran.