| |
| “WILD huntsmen?”—’T was 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, | 5 |
| 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 | 10 |
| That whistles round the wither’d 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 gray, | 15 |
| That hovers near the dying day; | |
| And the peasant hears but cannot see | |
| Those huntsmen pass him by. | |
| |
| Hark! ’t is the goblin of the wood, | |
| Rushing down the dark hillside; | 20 |
| 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; | 25 |
| Till far away the spectres ride, | |
| In distant lands along. | |
| |
