The Downing legends : Stories in Rhyme :: :: University of Virginia Library

Yea, further, all the voices woke
That peopled night in years agone.
From roaring wooded waste they spoke,
From tinkling brook and sighing lawn.
Around the eldritch girl's abode
They circled, lifting plaintive trills
And harmonies that cooed and flowed
Like yearning notes of whippoorwills:
Faint solos rolling into choirs
That sudden fell, then sharply rose,
Like carols from eolian wires
When winter through the casement blows:
Enchanters summoning their mate
(Perchance a mate, perchance their queen),
Till morning chased the goblin state
And power of darkness from the scene.

But ever, when the tempest yelled
And lightning tore the sheeted rain,
The magic music keened and swelled
Like choruses of souls in pain;
And through the windy midnight pressed
An eager train of pallid flights
That ringed the lassie's sleeping nest

And beat against her window-lights;
Now driving aimless here and there
As fitfully as shapes of dream,
Or bats and other waifs of air,
Bewildered by a lantern's gleam;
Now beckoning with filmy hands
And signing her to fare with them
Through lurid night to far-off lands,
Perchance to wear a diadem;
While ever and anon they purled
Imploring runes in speech unknown,
For ages flyted

[_]

flitted.

from the world,
Or known to wizard wight alone.
One word was clear in all the mell;
That single word was Yesebel.