Songs of the Seasons :: :: University of Virginia Library

In the days of ancient foray,
Round about the hunter's path,
A great, gloomy forest spread,
Sable shade o'er Ben and Strath—
Shook its plumes on wintry nights

O'er the raving torrent bed—
Cover gave to surly sprites—
Secrets held from vulgar ken,
Of dark deeds and foul intents,—
The death-throes of murdered men,—
Treacheries and ravishments!

Here, too, lurked the savage boar,
Brandishing his whetted tusks,
Chafing o'er his meal of husks,
Champing, snorting, sniffing gore.
With his bristles all astir,
When, on breath of dewy morn,
Music from the hunting horn
Animated oak and fir.

And the ruffian wolf found hiding
In this Sanctuary's heart,
Through the mazy covert gliding,
Noiseless, without star or chart;
Like a shadow in the shade,
With two flaming eyes endowed,
God defend the boldest-browed
By this murderer way-laid!

Here, too, streaming from the swamp,
Harbour found the shaggy Bull;
With his slow and measured tramp
Filling up the weary lull.

In the old days of the chase,
Ere the cunning arts expanded,
When the dagger, spear, and bow,
Of the rifle held the place,
Who would care a craftier foe
To encounter single-handed?

With the strength of Elm and Oak,
With the felling of the Pine,
In the Sanctuary's shrine;
With the Woodman's wanton stroke,
Levelled at some old-world column,
Guardian of the dread and solemn!
With the death-shriek of the Druid
Driven from his kin and kith—
Fettered to a monolith
In the grim heart of Glen Fruid,
From the violated covers,
Vanished the old forest rovers.

Through the gloomy mountain gorges,
Lightnings held their snaky play—
Gleamed and hissed the fiery fluid,
When the Pagan and his orgies,
Howling, shrieking, passed away!
Passed with Pagan superstition,
Crafty Bison, foaming Boar,
And the great Elk of tradition

That held harbour in Strathmore.
Yet, the Stag in all his glory,
Stately, royally apparell'd,
Stalketh where the were-wolf snarl'd—
Coucheth 'mong the remnants gnarl'd
Of a Forest famed in story!

In my musings held a part,
The great Tainchels of the kings,
When, by herald and by horn,
Messuages and summonings
Crossed and stirred the nation's heart.
With the breaking of the morn,
From the wellings to the mouth
Of a foaming river, roll'd
Tidings of the royal behest!
Out of castles in the South,
Nobles and retainers bold
To the place of trysting press'd.
Out of strongholds in the North
Haughty chieftains strutted forth;
Sturdy hench-men, pipers stilted,
Marshalling the vassals kilted.
From the East and from the West,
At the Monarch's high behest,
Experts with the bow and shaft,
Men of subtlety and mark,
Rangers in the Royal Park

Versed in olden Forest-craft
And the arts of Venerie,
Hurried, to show fealty.

With the Slogan of the Chase,
A great panic swept across
Thicket, underwood, and moss,
Wildering the antler'd race,
Roe and “rascal” laying spell on,
Scaring from his haunts the felon.
To the fissures of the rocks,
To the curtains of the fens,
To the holds of wolf and fox,
Fled the Forest denizens.

I am musing, I am dreaming,
Of the old, autumnal days!
Mused on through the dreamy haze,
They have gained a holier seeming;
Like the works of some great master,
In whose ekeing out took part
With the hand, the head and heart—
A brave labour of renown
Which, protected from disaster
By the worshippers of art,
Time hath chasten'd and ton'd down.

From my brows the film hath slid

Moist with eye-charms, that had power
Of inner pageant, while they hid
The gross transits of the hour.
Pass'd the visionary mood
Which resuscitated forms
Kindred to the steeps and storms—
Kindred to the mighty Wood
That, from Loyal's tow'ring crest,
Crowded into Strath and Glen,
Belted many a giant Ben.
With its umbrage onward press'd,
Drawing life from Loch and River,
From the stores of the Life-Giver,
Till it reach'd the Border marches,
Bridging with its shadowy arches
Silver Tweed and songful Teviot—
Reached the fosses of green Cheviot!

With freed eyes, once more I search
For symbols on the Grampian tops,
Wandering from copse to copse—
Through the hazels and the birch,
Up, beyond the purpled fringes,
Up into the place of boulders,
Round the mountains' lusty shoulders,
Where the storm-gates on their hinges,
In the elemental battle,
Wheel and clatter, clash and rattle!

Casting onward, I descry,
In a drowsy hollow feeding,
The great Hart, and to his leading
Follow hundreds of the kind,
Calf and Broacher, Stag and Hind;
But above them, royally,
Monarch in the Herd's esteem,
Crowned with antlers vast of beam,
Palmed and pointed, towers He,
Like an Oak of olden date
Among Saplings holding state!

Why this pricking of the ear?
Why this rousing of the head?
Why this sniffing of the wind
And regarding of the Hind?
What of trouble dreams the Deer?

In the drowsy hollow lies
A Tarn which the water-shed
Feeds with generous supplies;
Cherished thus and lustre-fed,
Brightest of the mountain eyes,
Up it gazes to the skies!
Here, Nymph lilies swing their cables
And with festal chalices
Carved in time of ancient fables
Out of glistening ivories,

Cumber the enamell'd tables
Wrought in buoyant malachite
By the cunning Water-Sprite.

Under screen of reedy spears,
Here the wary mallard steers
Followed by his dusky mate,
Painted, like a barge of state,
With its pageant prow elate!
From the quiet tarn, in stealth
And ambuscade, a riv'let issues
At each turn uncoiling tissues
Laden to its brim with wealth,—
Crystal life, and trusts of health.
From the covert of the sedges,
From the hidings of the banks,
To and fro, flit jewell'd wedges,
Pearly fins and rubied flanks.

Out at bowshot from the source,
I lose token of its course,
As it passeth from the levels,
Through a fissure in the glen,
To pursue its merry revels
Downward to the homes of men.
In the cleft, below the hollow,
As I watch it disappear,
Straining out mine eyes to follow,

A faint clicking meets the ear.
Up! the mighty Antlered Head!
Up! the fronts of many a Deer!
Panic through the Herd hath spread
Forecast of the Stalker dread!—
Comes a blaze, and comes a smoke,—
Comes the rifle's fell discharge;
Echoes bound are set at large,
Loosed are lips that only spoke
In conf'rence with the Thunder-stroke.

Oaks! your arms of tempest swing!
Wave your sable plumes, ye pines!
Fallen is the Forest King,
With his crown of many tines!

Through the corrie, up the shoulders
Of the mountain, stream the masses,
Tearing past the place of Boulders—
Plunging down through savage passes—
Crossing torrent—climbing crag.
On the flurried wings of fear—
Onward press the startled deer,
Calf and Brochard, Hind and Stag!

From their heathy ambush start
The grim slayer of the Hart
And his stalwart, kilted gillie,

In the leash a deer-hound leading.
But a thought's-time since, were feeding
In that hollow, now so stilly,
Hundreds of the cervine race.
Not a hoof is left, nor horn,
Not a mottled Hind to mourn
The dead monarch of the Chase!

It is sunset—and the setting
Is Creation's self of glory—
A Creation, like a story
Fabulous, yet past forgetting.
In a language richly fraught
Of the gems that image Thought,
Of the liquid syllables
Found, like pearls, in Saxon wells—
Of the coinage, rare and quaint,
Dug up in the Doric fells;
Fraught of cyphers and of scrolls,
Mystical and half attaint,
Spelt out on Cathedral walls—
Of curt words that live in mottoes
Or in charters of entail,
Of the warblings heard in grottoes—
Voices from the nightingale!—
Fraught of sounds, which once did duty
In the Academic grove,
Full of power and life and beauty,

Apt for Hymns of War and Love;
Sounds which Homer turn'd to meaning—
Sounds which Sappho trained to measure;
Many a century intervening,
Flowing still to Britain's Treasure,
To her endless lingual Treasure!—
Steel'd with sinews of a tongue
Spoken by the dauntless Latin,
Now at vespers and at matin
Mumbled, parodied, unstrung;
Ruling once in camps and senates,
Medium, now, of monkish tenets!
Medium, by whose twisted handle
Law and leech-craft sweat and swindle,
And at bidding of the Vandal
Science moves on rusty spindle.

In a language to whose keeping
Poets gave the inner man—
Felt its presence in their sleeping,
Turned and woke to lead the Van
With new Pæans—nobler measures!
In its variegated treasures,
In the lavish flow and glow,
In its pithy emphasis,
In its sweet alliterations,
In its swayings to and fro,
And its graceful undulations,

In its chaste simplicities,
In its rare plasticities
And its fine felicities.
In its bundle of conceits,
And its store of counterfeits,
In its conjuncts and declensions,
In its classic apprehensions,—
In these marvels, all combined,
Ingot over ingot turning,
I am at a loss to find
Utt'rance to the hidden yearning—
Fluency of song and power
To depict that glowing hour!

High upon a peak defiant,
On the Cromlech of a Giant,
I sit watching, for the night
Comes, and with it One I dread.
The grand splendours overhead
And the dazzlings round about
Now are vanished from my sight.
Towards Ocean looking out,
I descry upon the wing,
In the far West glimmering,
Galleons freighted with the spoils
Of my palace grounds and arbours—
With the fruitage of my toils
Pressing on to distant harbours.

As I watch them disappear,
Shining mast and crimson'd sail,
A great rustling fills the ear,
As of leaves before a gale.
Night's wan shadows, fast and faster,
Travel past me, bringing fear
And the boding of disaster.
East-ward, on a wall of vapour,
Like some grimy, battered shield
Found on ancient battle-field,
Hangs the moon, full orbed and dim,
While above her pallid rim
Holds a star its ghostly taper.

Again the film is on mine eyes!
Presences before me press
Sister Summer to caress,
Summer radiant with reflections,
Sister Spring to sympathise!
Spring intent on resurrections.
Other shapes and evil-brow'd
Mingle in the phantom crowd—
Some to warn and some to scare,
Some to mock and some to stare
Into stone with snaky eyes,
Overlapp'd with snaky hair!

From the depth of every hollow,

Comes a moaning, and the sounds,
Piteous more, of wailing follow,
With the howl of famish'd hounds!
Through the air, a fire-bolt hurtled,
Casts its glare o'er cairn and peak,
From their distant eyries, startled
By its hissing, eagles shriek!
Welded in the Arctic forges
Ice-bolts follow thick and fast,
Rattling through the flinty gorges,
Out on foray with the blast.
From the far and frosty regions
With his desolating legions
The Usurper comes at last.

Nine gray, weather-beaten stones
Crown the peak on which I rest,
Laid out like a Runic chest.
Old Tradition and her crones
Gibber of gigantic bones,
Without cross or cerement,
In this dreary dwelling pent.
Surely, or mine ear deceives,
I hear stirrings under-ground—
A great wrestling and the sound
Of yokings to fetch home the sheaves!
On my knees I fall and pray,
Sister Summer! Stay! oh stay,

Sister Spring! thy rosaries bring!
Alas! both have fled away!
Under me the Cromlech heaves,
And the huge gray stones dispart,
The last anguish rends the heart,
Bear me to the stream I love,
Bear me to the weeping grove!
Bury me among the leaves!