VI.
The sun is in
hiding,
Or
frozen its beam
On the peaks where he lingers,
On the glens, where the singers,[91]
With their bills and small
fingers
Are
raking the stream,
Or picking the midstead
For
forage—and scream.
VII.
When darkens the
gloaming
Oh,
scant is their cheer!
All benumb’d is their
song in
The hedge they are thronging,
And for shelter still longing,
The
mortar[92] they tear;
Ever noisily, noisily
Squealing
their care.
VIII.
The running stream’s
chieftain[93]
Is
trailing to land,
So flabby, so grimy,
So sickly, so slimy,—
The spots of his prime he
Has
rusted with sand;
Crook-snouted his crest is
That
taper’d so grand.
IX.
How mournful in
winter
The
lowing of kine;
How lean-back’d they
shiver,
How draggled their cover,
How their nostrils run over
With
drippings of brine,
So scraggy and crining
In
the cold frost they pine.
X.
’Tis hallow-mass
time, and
To
mildness farewell!
Its bristles are low’ring
With darkness; o’erpowering
Are its waters, aye showering
With
onset so fell;
Seem the kid and the yearling
As
rung their death-knell.
XI.
Every out-lying
creature,
How
sinew’d soe’er,
Seeks the refuge of shelter;
The race of the antler
They snort and they falter,
A-cold
in their lair;
And the fawns they are wasting
Since
their kin is afar.
XII.
Such the songs
that are saddest
And
dreariest of all;
I ever am eerie
In the morning to hear ye!
When foddering, to cheer the
Poor
herd in the stall—
While each creature is moaning,
And
sickening in thrall.
[90] “Birk-shaw.” A few Scotticisms will be found in these versions, at once to flavour the style, and, it must be admitted, to assist the rhymes.
[91] Birds.
[92] The sides of the cottages—plastered with mud or mortar, instead of lime.
[93] Salmon.
DIRGE FOR IAN MACECHAN.
A FRAGMENT.
Mackay was entertained by Macechan, who was a respectable store-farmer, from his earliest life to his marriage. According to his reverend biographer,[94] the last lines of the elegy, of which the following is a translation, were much approved.
I see the wretch of high degree,
Though poverty
has struck his race,
Pass with a darkness
on his face
That door of hospitality.