Later Poems of Alexander Anderson "Surfaceman": Edited with a Biographical Sketch, by Alexander Brown: A New Edition |
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HILL SHADOWS. |
 | Later Poems of Alexander Anderson |  |
HILL SHADOWS.
A bird on the moorland is calling
As a spirit may shriek in its dream,
Or a ghost wail forth in the darkness
For a touch of a single beam.
As a spirit may shriek in its dream,
Or a ghost wail forth in the darkness
For a touch of a single beam.
I know not what lonely secret
May be hid in that weary cry,
But it chords with the winds and their music,
And the wide grey vault of the sky.
May be hid in that weary cry,
But it chords with the winds and their music,
And the wide grey vault of the sky.
Can that bird be the spirit of sorrow
That dwells on the moors and the hills,
Where the clouds have darker shadows,
And a sadder voice in the rills?
That dwells on the moors and the hills,
Where the clouds have darker shadows,
And a sadder voice in the rills?
Can it be that, when crying, he voices
A touch of that dim despair
In the long, wide stretch of the moorland
And the lone mute things that are there?
A touch of that dim despair
In the long, wide stretch of the moorland
And the lone mute things that are there?
I know not; but still, as I listen
To the sorrow I hear in his call,
I bear the half in my bosom,
And it gives a colour to all.
To the sorrow I hear in his call,
I bear the half in my bosom,
And it gives a colour to all.
| Later Poems of Alexander Anderson | |