The Isles of Loch Awe and Other Poems of my Youth With Sixteen Illustrations. By Philip Gilbert Hamerton |
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GABRIEL RATCHETS. |
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 | The Isles of Loch Awe and Other Poems of my Youth |  |
201
GABRIEL RATCHETS.
“The peasants fancy the noise of the wild swans flying high in the nights
to be spirits, or, as they call them here in the north, Gabriel Ratchets.”
—John Webster.
“Wild huntsmen?”—'Twas a flight of swans,
But so invisibly they flew,
That in his mind the pallid hind
Could hear a bugle horn.
Faintly sounds the airy note,
And the deepest bay from the staghound's throat,
Like the yelp of a cur on the air doth float;
And hardly heard is the wild halloo
On the straggling night-breeze borne!
But so invisibly they flew,
That in his mind the pallid hind
Could hear a bugle horn.
Faintly sounds the airy note,
And the deepest bay from the staghound's throat,
Like the yelp of a cur on the air doth float;
And hardly heard is the wild halloo
On the straggling night-breeze borne!
They fly on the blast of the forest
That whistles round the withered tree,
But where they go we may not know,
Nor see them as they fly.
With hound and horn they ride away
In the dreary twilight cold and grey,
That hovers near the dying day;
And the peasant hears but cannot see
Those huntsmen pass him by.
That whistles round the withered tree,
But where they go we may not know,
Nor see them as they fly.
With hound and horn they ride away
In the dreary twilight cold and grey,
That hovers near the dying day;
And the peasant hears but cannot see
Those huntsmen pass him by.
202
Hark! 'tis the goblin of the wood,
Rushing down the dark hill-side,
With steeds that neigh and hounds that bay,
All viewless sweeps the throng.
And heavily where the fallow-deer feeds
Clatter the hoofs of their hunting steeds,
Like the mountain gale on the valley's meads;
Till far away the spectres ride,
In distant lands along.
Rushing down the dark hill-side,
With steeds that neigh and hounds that bay,
All viewless sweeps the throng.
And heavily where the fallow-deer feeds
Clatter the hoofs of their hunting steeds,
Like the mountain gale on the valley's meads;
Till far away the spectres ride,
In distant lands along.
1849.
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