Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. IV. The Nineteenth Century: Wordsworth to Rossetti

Arthur William Edgar O’Shaughnessy (1844–1881)

From ‘Bisclaveret’ (Epic of Women)

NOW over intervening waste

Of lowland drear, and barren wold,

I scour, and ne’er assuage my haste,

Inflamed with yearnings manifold;

Drinking a distant sound that seems

To come around me like a flood;

While all the track of moonlight gleams

Before me like a streak of blood;

And bitter stifling scents are past

A-dying on the night behind,

And sudden piercing stings are cast

Against me in the tainted wind.

And lo, afar, the gradual stir,

And rising of the stray wild leaves;

The swaying pine, and shivering fir,

And windy sound that moans and heaves

In first fits, till with utter throes

The whole wild forest lolls about;

And all the fiercer clamour grows,

And all the moan becomes a shout;

And mountains near and mountains far

Breathe freely; and the mingled roar

Is as of floods beneath some star

Of storms, when shore cries unto shore.

But soon, from every hidden lair

Beyond the forest tracks, in thick

Wild coverts, or in deserts bare,

Behold they come,—renewed and quick—

The splendid fearful herds that stray

By midnight, when tempestuous moons

Light them to many a shadowy prey,

And earth beneath the thunder swoons.