The Well of Loch Maree

The flags of war like storm birds fly, The charging trumpets blow; Yet rolls no thunder in the sky, No earthquake strives below.

She sings by her wheel at that low cottage door, Which the long evening shadow is stretching before; With a music as sweet as the music which Breathed softly and faintly in the ear of our dreams!

Here is the place; right over the hill Runs the path I took; You can see the gap in the old wall still, And the stepping-stones in the shallow brook.

On the wide lawn the snow lay deep, Ridged o’er with many a drifted heap; The wind that through the pine-trees The naked elm-boughs tossed and swung;

The birds against the April wind Flew northward, singing as they flew; They sang, "The land we leave behind Has swords for corn-blades, blood for dew." "O wild-birds, flying from the South

An incident of the Sepoy Pipes of the misty moorlands, Voice of the glens and hills; The droning of the torrents,

He comes, - he comes, - the Frost Spirit comes! You may trace his footsteps now On the naked woods and the blasted fields And the brown hill's withered brow. He has smitten the leaves of the gray old trees Where their pleasant green…