The Works of The Ettrick Shepherd Centenary Edition. With a Memoir of the Author, by the Rev. Thomas Thomson ... Poems and Life. With Many Illustrative Engravings [by James Hogg] |
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 | The Works of The Ettrick Shepherd |  |
The hero turn'd his beamless eye
Toward the grisly peaks of Skye:
Some thought unfathomed seemed to hover
His dark departing spirit over—
Of roaming on his mountain wind,
Swifter than hawk or dappled hind:
Of stag-hound's bay and bugles swelling,
And answering echoes bravely yelling;
But all was one distorted scene,
The vision of a soul in pain,
That trembled, neither bound nor free,
'Twixt time and immortality.
With that wild look it fled for ever,
From hollow groan, and rigid shiver—
From clenched hand, and writhing brow—
Eternal God!—What is it now?
Toward the grisly peaks of Skye:
Some thought unfathomed seemed to hover
His dark departing spirit over—
Of roaming on his mountain wind,
Swifter than hawk or dappled hind:
Of stag-hound's bay and bugles swelling,
And answering echoes bravely yelling;
But all was one distorted scene,
The vision of a soul in pain,
That trembled, neither bound nor free,
'Twixt time and immortality.
With that wild look it fled for ever,
From hollow groan, and rigid shiver—
From clenched hand, and writhing brow—
Eternal God!—What is it now?
| The Works of The Ettrick Shepherd | |