retch surprise.

VII.

Ah, luckless swain, o'er all unblest, indeed!
Whom late bewilder'd in the dank, dark fen, 105
Far from his flocks, and smoking hamlet, then!
To that sad spot where hums the sedgy weed:
On him, enraged, the fiend, in angry mood,
Shall never look with pity's kind concern,
But instant, furious, raise the whelming flood 110
O'er its drown'd banks, forbidding all return!
Or, if he meditate his wish'd escape,
To some dim hill, that seems uprising near,
To his faint eye the grim and grisly shape,
In all its terrors clad, shall wild appear. 115
Meantime the watery surge shall round him rise,
Pour'd sudden forth from every swelling source!
What now remains but tears and hopeless sighs?
His fear-shook limbs have lost their youthly force,
And down the waves he floats, a pale and breathless corse! 120

VIII.

For him in vain his anxious wife shall wait,
Or wander forth to meet him on his way;
For him in vain at to-fall of the day,
His babes shall linger at the unclosing gate!
Ah, ne'er shall he return! Alone, if night 125
Her travel'd limbs in broken slumbers steep,
With drooping willows drest, his mournful sprite
Shall visit sad, perchance, her silent sleep:
Then he, perhaps, with moist and watery hand,
Shall fondly seem to press her shuddering cheek, 130
And with his blue swoln face before her stand,
And, shivering cold, these piteous accents speak:
"Pursue, dear wife, thy daily toils pursue,
At dawn or dusk, industrious as before;
Nor e'er of me one helpless thought renew, 135
While I lie weltering on the osier'd shore,
Drown'd by the Kelpie's[47] wrath, nor e'er shall aid thee more!"

IX.

Unbounded is thy range; with varied skill
Thy muse may, like those feathery tribes which spring
From their rude rocks, extend her skirting wing 140
Round the moist marge of each cold Hebrid isle,
To that hoar pile[48] which still its ruins shows:
In whose small vaults a pigmy folk is found,
Whose bones the delver with his spade upthrows,
And culls them, wondering, from the hallow'd ground! 145
Or thither,[49] where, beneath the showery west,
The mighty kings of three fair realms are laid;
Once foes, perhaps, together