Classic Poem

FIRST BARD

Night is dull and dark,
The clouds rest on the hills;
No star with twinkling beam,
No moon looks from the skies.
I hear the blast in the wood,
But distant and dull I hear it.
The stream of the valley murmurs,
Low is its murmur too.
From the tree at the grave of the dead,
The lonely screech-owl groans.
I see a dim form on the plain,
'Tis a ghost! it fades, it flies;
Some dead shall pass this way.
From the lowly hut of the hill
The distant dog is howling;
The stag lies by the mountain-well,
The hind is at his side;
She hears the wind in his horns,
She starts, but lies again.
The roe is in the cleft of the rock:
The heath-cock's head beneath his wing.
No beast, no bird is abroad,
But the owl, and the howling fox;
She on the leafless tree,
He on the cloudy hill.
Dark, panting, trembling, sad,
The traveller has lost his way;
Through shrubs, through thorns he goes,
Beside the gurgling rills;
He fears the rock and the pool,
He fears the ghost of the night.
The old tree groans to the blast;
The falling branch resounds.
The wind drives the clung thorn
Along the sighing grass;
He shakes amid the night.
Dark, dusty, howling, is night,
Cloudy, windy, and full of ghosts;
The dead are abroad; my friends
Receive me from the night.

SECOND BARD

The wind is up on the mountain;
The shower of the hill descends
Woods groan, and windows clap;
The growing river roars:
The traveller attempts the ford,
He falls, he shrieks, he dies
The storm drives the horse from the hill,
The goat and the lowing cow;
They tremble as drives the shower,
And look for a shade of the stall.
The hunter starts from sleep in his lone hut,
And wakes the fire decay'd;
His wet dogs smoke around him:
He stops the chinks with heath
Loud roar two mountain streams,
Which meet beside his booth.
Sad on the side of the hill
The wandering shepherd sits.
The tree resounds above him.
The stream roars down the rock.
He waits the rising moon
To lead him to his home
Ghosts ride on the storm to-night.
Sweet is their voice between the gusts of wind,
Their songs are of other worlds.
The rain is past. The dry winds blow
Streams roar and windows clap;
Cold drops fall from the roof.
I see the starry sky. —
But the shower gathers again.
Dark, dark is the western sky!
Night is stormy, dismal, dark;
Receive me, my friends, from the night.