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| WHERE is my chief, my master, this bleak night, mavrone? | |
| O cold, cold, miserably cold is this bleak night for Hugh! | |
| Its showery, arrowy, speary sleet pierceth one thro’ and thro’, | |
| Pierceth one to the very bone. | |
| |
| Rolls real thunder? Or was that red vivid light | 5 |
| Only a meteor? I scarce know; but through the midnight dim | |
| The pitiless ice-wind streams. Except the hate that persecutes him, | |
| Nothing hath crueler venomy might. | |
| |
| An awful, a tremendous night is this, meseems! | |
| The flood-gates of the rivers of heaven, I think, have been burst wide; | 10 |
| Down from the overcharged clouds, like to headlong ocean’s tide, | |
| Descends grey rain in roaring streams. | |
| |
| Tho’ he were even a wolf ranging the round green woods, | |
| Tho’ he were even a pleasant salmon in the unchainable sea, | |
| Tho’ he were a wild mountain eagle, he could scarce bear, he, | 15 |
| This sharp sore sleet, these howling floods. | |
| |
| O mournful is my soul this night for Hugh Maguire! | |
| Darkly as in a dream he strays. Before him and behind | |
| Triumphs the tyrannous anger of the wounding wind, | |
| The wounding wind that burns as fire. | 20 |
| |
| It is my bitter grief, it cuts me to the heart | |
| That in the country of Clan Darry this should be his fate! | |
| O woe is me, where is he? Wandering, houseless, desolate, | |
| Alone, without or guide or chart! | |
| |
| Medreams I see just now his face, the strawberry-bright, | 25 |
| Uplifted to the blackened heavens, while the tempestuous winds | |
| Blow fiercely over and round him, and the smiting sleetshower blinds | |
| The hero of Galang to-night! | |
| |
| Large, large affliction unto me and mine it is | |
| That one of his majestic bearing, his fair stately form, | 30 |
| Should thus be tortured and o’erborne; that this unsparing storm | |
| Should wreak its wrath on head like his! | |
| |
| That his great hand, so oft the avenger of the oppressed, | |
| Should this chill churlish night, perchance, be paralysed by frost; | |
| While through some icicle-hung thicket, as one lorn and lost, | 35 |
| He walks and wanders without rest. | |
| |
| The tempest-driven torrent deluges the mead, | |
| It overflows the low banks of the rivulets and ponds; | |
| The lawns and pasture-grounds lie locked in icy bonds, | |
| So that the cattle cannot feed. | 40 |
| |
| The pale-bright margins of the streams are seen by none; | |
| Rushes and sweeps along the untamable flood on every side; | |
| It penetrates and fills the cottagers’ dwellings far and wide; | |
| Water and land are blent in one. | |
| |
| Through some dark woods, ’mid bones of monsters, Hugh now strays, | 45 |
| As he confronts the storm with anguished heart, but manly brow, | |
| O what a sword-wound to that tender heart of his, were now | |
| A backward glance at peaceful days! | |
| |
| But other thoughts are his, thoughts that can still inspire | |
| With joy and onward-bounding hope the bosom of MacNee; | 50 |
| Thoughts of his warriors charging like bright billows of the sea, | |
| Borne on the wind’s wings, flashing fire! | |
| |
| And tho’ frost glaze to-night the clear dew of his eyes, | |
| And white ice-gauntlets glove his noble fine fair fingers o’er, | |
| A warm dress is to him that lightning-garb he ever wore, | 55 |
| The lightning of his soul, not skies. | |
| |
Avran.
Hugh marched forth to fight: I grieved to see him so depart. | |
| And lo ! to-night he wanders frozen, rain-drenched, sad betrayed; | |
| But the memory of the lime-white mansions his right hand hath laid | |
| In ashes, warms the hero’s heart! | 60 |
