| |
| WHEN winds were wailing round me, | |
| And Day, with closing eye, | |
| Scowled from beneath the sullen clouds | |
| Of pale November’s sky, | |
| In downcast meditation | 5 |
| All silently I stood, | |
| Gazing the wintry ocean’s | |
| Rough, bleak, and barren flood. | |
| |
| A place more wild and lonely | |
| Was nowhere to be seen; | 10 |
| The caverned sea-rocks beetled o’er | |
| The billows rushing green; | |
| There was no sound from aught around, | |
| Save, mid the echoing caves, | |
| The plashing and the dashing | 15 |
| Of the melancholy waves. | |
| |
| High, mid the lowering waste of sky, | |
| The gray gulls flew in swarms; | |
| And far beneath the surf upheaved | |
| The sea-weed’s tangly arms; | 20 |
| The face of Nature in a pall | |
| Death-shrouded seemed to be, | |
| As by St. Serf’s lone tomb arose | |
| The dirges of the sea. | |
| |
| In twilight’s shadowy scowling, | 25 |
| Not far remote there lay | |
| Thine old dim harbor, Culross, | |
| Smoky and worn and gray; | |
| Through far-back generations | |
| Thy blackened piles had stood, | 30 |
| And, though the abodes of living men, | |
| All looked like solitude. | |
| |
| Of hoar decrepitude all spake, | |
| And ruin and decay; | |
| Of fierce, wild times departed; | 35 |
| Of races passed away; | |
| Of quaint, grim vessels beating up | |
| Against the whelming breeze; | |
| Of tempest-stricken mariners, | |
| Far on the foamy seas. | 40 |
| |
| It spake of swart gray-headed men, | |
| Now dust within their graves, | |
| Who sailed with Barton or with Spens, | |
| To breast the trampling waves; | |
| And how, in shallops picturesque, | 45 |
| Unawed they drifted forth, | |
| Directed by the one bright star | |
| That points the stormy North. | |
| |
| And how, when windows rattled, | |
| And strong pines bowed to earth, | 50 |
| Pale wives, with trembling children mute, | |
| Would cower beside the hearth,— | |
| All sadly musing on the ships | |
| That, buffeting the breeze, | |
| Held but a fragile plank betwixt | 55 |
| The sailor and the seas. | |
| |
| How welcome their return to home! | |
| What wondrous tales they told, | |
| Of birds with rainbow plumage, | |
| And trees with fruits of gold; | 60 |
| Of perils in the wilderness, | |
| Beside the lion’s den; | |
| And huts beneath the giant palms, | |
| Where dwelt the painted men! | |
| |
| Mid melancholy fancies | 65 |
| My spirit loved to stray, | |
| Back through the mists of hooded Eld, | |
| Lone wandering, far away; | |
| When dim-eyed Superstition | |
| Upraised her eldritch croon, | 70 |
| And witches held their orgies | |
| Beneath the waning moon. | |
| |
| Yes! through Tradition’s twilight, | |
| To days had Fancy flown | |
| When Canmore or when Kenneth dree’d | 75 |
| The Celt’s uneasy crown; | |
| When men were bearded savages, | |
| An unenlightened horde, | |
| Mid which gleamed Cunning’s scapulaire, | |
| And War’s unshrinking sword. | 80 |
| |
| And, in their rusty hauberks, | |
| Thronged past the plaided bands;— | |
| And slanting lay the Norsemen’s keels | |
| On ocean’s dreary sands;— | |
| And on the long flat moorlands, | 85 |
| The cairn, with lichens gray, | |
| Marked where their souls shrieked forth in blood, | |
| On Battle’s iron day. | |
| |
| Between me and the sea loomed out | |
| The ivied Abbey old, | 90 |
| In whose grim vaults the Bruces kneel | |
| In marble quaint and cold; | |
| And where, inurned, lies hid the heart | |
| Of young Kinloss deplored, | |
| Whose blood, by Belgium’s Oster-Scheldt, | 95 |
| Stained Sackville’s ruthless sword. | |
| |
| Waned all these trancèd visions;— | |
| But, on my eerie sight, | |
| Remained the old dim seaport | |
| Beneath the scowl of night; | 100 |
| The sea-mews for their island cliffs | |
| Had left the homeless sky, | |
| And only to the dirgeful blast | |
| The wild seas made reply. | |
| |
