by John Buchan
His arm was strong as the young yew tree,
His heart as the young stag’s thigh;
His eye saw far as the Kite’s in war,
When the wounded foemen die.
It fell upon the Martinmas tide,
When the skies are gray and cold,
When the night falls black and the winds are out
And the sheep are in the fold,
That the tidings came from Moffatdale
That the English men were strong
To harry and hunt and carry and lift
And work their neighbours wrong.
Then up and out spake Gideon Scott
And an angry man was he,
“May blight and curse fall on my house
And sorrow come upon me,
If Hall and Reid from over the Tweed
Shall hunt and harry here,
While a Scottish man may mount a steed
Or his arm may lift a spear.”
Now he has saddled his good gray horse,
And he has ridden away.
The night was black as the mouth of a pit,
And wild as the Judgment Day;
And he has ridden by moor and bent,
Field and castle and tree,
For his mind was high and his heart was wroth
And an angry man was he.
He rode by the bent and he rode by the stream,
Many a mile and far
By bank and lea and ford and tree,
Bield and tussock and scaur;
But he scarce had won to the Half-way Stane,
Scarce to the Birkit Mound,
When his horse fell lame i’ the howe of a burn,
And sank upon the ground.
Then Gideon Scott he leapt to his feet
And a desp’rate man was he.
He swore by devil, he swore by saint,
He swore by the Holy Three.
And then he swore an awesome oath,
As never a man before;
“My soul I’ll sell to the Lord of Hell
For a horse to carry me o’er.”
Scarce the word had left his mouth
And gone to the ear of God,
When he was aware of a coal-black mare,
Stood pawing on the sod.
Black she stood from neck to hoof,
Black from tail to mane;
Her eyes were fire and her heart was ire,
And she sniffed across the plain.
Never a word he spake but quick
He bitted and saddled the black,
He strapped the girth and buckled the belt
And leapt upon her back.
And he’s away on the awesome mare
By an awesome purchase bought;
“But I care not a span for beast or man
Or fiend”, quo’ Gideon Scott.
The gray had ridden like flying cloud,
But the black like a hag by night;
The gray had leapt like the young roe-deer,
But the black like a fiend in flight.
By bank and lea, by ford and tree,
Bield and tussock and scar,
By bent and moor by field and stream,
Many a mile and far.
And they have come to the Annan Water,
And it ran high and red.
Never a man might ford it safe,
Nor horse i’ the Border bred.
But the mare has flown like a swallow in Spring,
Clear from bank to brae.
There was never such leap in the world before,
Nor has been to this day.
Now he has come to Moffatdale,
And a glow is in the sky
Of blazing thatch and burning stack,
And the fiery splinters fly.
He has heard the cry of wounded men,
The roar of a conquering foe;
And he bites his lip and spurs his steed
And nerves him for a blow.
Like the Winter rain across the plain
In hurrying gust they ride;
Like a bolt from God they scour the sod,
And never a moment bide.
They scatter through crowds of fighting men,
Din and clatter and blaze;
And they are out on the bent again,
And off on the mountain ways.
And strange I ween must the sight have been
To Southron and to Scot,
A coal-black horse and an angry man
Past like a musket-shot.
And little they recked of fight and fray,
Cattle and plunder share;
But each man fell on his bended knee
And strove to mutter a prayer.
A fearful man was Gideon Scott,
With terror was he ta’en;
And he strove to leap from the flying mare,
But ever he strove in vain.
For swifter still the black mare flew,
And stranger was the way,
And the night grew black as the mouth of a pit,
And wild as the Judgment Day.
Now they have passed by the Wildshaw Bum,
And o’er by the Mirkshaw Head;
The water splashed and the marsh-fire flashed
At the sound of the horse’s tread.
As a Winter stream or an angry cloud
They fled by the gray Hartfell,
By tussock and tree, by ridge and lea,
Stream and water and well.
They rode by the rushing Annan stream
Red from fray to bank,
And twice the mare has swum across
And never her shoulders sank.
They scoured the glen from mouth to end
By hill and water and way,
To the place loved well by the Lord of Hell,
The hole of Erickstane brae.
They found the rider at mom on the hill
With his face upturned and cold,
And an awesome fear was in his eye
As never a man has told.
And to this hour no word or power,
Love nor honour nor dread,
Will lead a man by the waters wan
To the moors of Erickstanehead.
The Strong Man Armed
1895
“Gift me guerdon and grant me grace,”
Said the Lord of the North.
“Nothing I ask thee of gear or place
Ere I get me forth.
Gift one guerdon to mine and me
For the shade and the sheen.”
“Ask and it shall be given unto thee,”
Said Mary the Queen.
“May I never falter the wide world through,
But stand in the gate:
May my sword bite sharp and my steel ring true
At the ford and the strait:
Bide not on bed nor dally with song
When the strife goeth keen;
This be my boon from the Gods of the strong!”
“Be it so,” said the Queen.
“May I stand in the mist and the clear and the chill,
In the cycle of wars,
In the brown of the moss and the grey of the hill
With my eyes to the stars!
Gift this guerdon and grant this grace
That I bid good e’en,
The sword in the hand and the foot to the race,
The wind in my teeth and the rain in my face!”
“Be it so,” said the Queen.
Antiphilus of Byzantium
1895
Anth. Pal ix. 546
Give me a mat on the deck,
When the awnings sound to the blows of the spray,
And the hearthstones crack with the flames a-back
And the pot goes bubbling away.
Give me a boy to cook my broth;
For table a ship’s plank lacking a cloth,
And never a fork or knife;
And, after a game with a rusty pack,
The bo’sun’s whistle to pipe us back —
That’s the fortune fit for a king,
For Oh! I love common life!
Princess of the Shining Eyes (1895/1899)
“We were two children, you and I,
Unkempt, unwatched, far-wandering, shy,
Trudging from mom with easy load,
While Faery lay adown the road...
Sometimes, on sunny summer’s noon,
Our wearied feet got elfin shoon,
And we toiled up the hill so high
We seemed to knock against the sky,
While far above the clouds we heard
The singing of the snow-white Bird...
You in such lore were wondrous wise,
My princess of the shining eyes.
Our favour was the crimson Rose,
Our light the glow-worm’s lamp, our ways
The Road the King of Errin goes,
And that is to the End of Days.”
To Master Izaak Walton
1896
Master, I trow ‘tis mony a year
Since last you fared a-fishing here,
Since first you cast your eager flies
Athwart the streams of Paradise.
And we, we love to read thy book
By placid stream and trickling brook,
When trout are scarce or winds are loud,
Or when the sky hath never a cloud.
But you are in a happier mead,
Where fish are never on the feed.
And, master, these are evil days
When scarce a man our art may praise.
For some they say ‘tis most unfit
For bearded men in peace to sit,
And watch a meditative hook,
Or read a cheerful, pleasant book,
When they should to their work be hieing,
For time is short and all are dying.
And some they hold ‘tis most unkind
Around the hook the silk to wind,
And hold a fish with barb or steel, —
As if, forsooth, a fish could feel.
But some there were both stout and hale
Who did not bow the knee to Baal.
Good Master Stoddart, now with God,
Full well he loved to walk the sod
On a fresh, westering April day
And see the sportive salmon play.
And the great singer of the north.
He loved by stream to wander forth;
He hated not the rod and line,
He called thee “Walton, sage, benign.”
And some there be in London town,
Of bookish men, who often down
To the green country come to try
Their long-loved skill of fishery.
Why weary thee with idle praise,
Thou wanderer in Elysian ways?
Where skies are fresh aand fields are green,
And never dust nor smoke is seen,
Nor news sheets, nor subscription-lists,
Nor merchants, nor philanthropists.
For there the waters fall and flow
By flagrant banks, and still below
The great three-pounders rise and take
The ‘palmer,’
‘alder,’
‘dun,’or ‘drake.’
Now by that stream, if there you be,
I prithee keep a place for me.
A Journey of Little Profit
1896
The Devil he sang, the Devil he played
High and fast and free.
And this was ever the song he made
As it was told to me.
“Oh, I am the king of the air and the ground,
And lord of the seasons’ roll,
And I will give you a hundred pound,
If you will give me your soul.”
Gibraltar
1897
Where Eastern waters, hot from sun-browned lands,
Long lost in isles and mazed on Afric sands,
Haste to the stem Atlantic, fierce and free
And find the deep unfathomable sea;
There stands a rick, above the shaken strait
Girdled with iron, the warder at the gate
Of the firm tracts of earth, immortal, high,
Wide to the swift winds out the glittering sky.
When from the Orient Dawn drives forth her car
Here first the shafts are flung, and when afar
The sun sets red and the soft daylight flies
On this bold front the mellow evening dies.
The seasons bring their dower, to all the lands,
When till and reap, to Spring with gen’rous hands
Gives of her plenty, summer adds her store
And Autumn brings her harvest evermore.
But this blunt crag recks not of change or time
Nor Winter brings decay nor June her prime,
But ageless, placid, her grey face she rears.
To meet the months, and spruce-like, take the years.
Unmoved, unchanged to face the tempests’ war
The sun of noon and the lone evening-star.
The years fleet on, the nations strive and pass
The world grows old and in a darkling glass
Change leaves its’ image, all is haunted, thick
With legends of lost days. But even as quick
At Springs’ first blush, green mantles o’er the bough
Of the high-spending oak, so girt art thou
With memory of the cycles of all time
Age lies upon thee as the morning-rime
Of speech, the voiceless years find heritage
Thou art all clad in story; on thy page.
In the dim dawn of man when life was still
And remote as some untrodden hill
Whereon strange portents dwelled, and on each hand
Linked Unknown Doors above the golden land,
When seas were wide, and skies unnarrowed then
To the blind wondering world of wandering men
Thou marked the portal, where this narrow ken
Of parcelled shore ceased, and the dark beyond
Was thick with terrors. Oft the seaman conned
This chart of isles and longing looked again
To where below thy terrace yawned the main
And thought of how in his far Lycian town
The minstrel sang of lands beyond thy frown
The golden islets set in summer seas
Beyond thy Pillars, called of Herakles,
Of how some Greatheart, hot with youth, set sail
Loosed all his cords and drove before the gale,
Till some still mom he saw the yellow sands,
The golden apples and slim-ankled bands
Of ocean-maids, and last, his bride to be,
The light-tamed watcher of the waters, she
More fair in face than fair Persephone.
Fired with such word, the seaman quarrelled no more
Scorned his dull round, and loosing from the shore
Sailed to the evening, that in the suns path
He drove his course, and met the tempest’s wrath
With front of rain, till after many days
And wanderings may in adventurous ways
When all his face with salt was crusted o’er
Wearied he sank, as never heretofore,
Fordone with toils of battle with the brine,
Then o’er the bows there flashed a gleaming line
Of surf-washed rocks and fields fresh-bathed in rains
Of cloud-capped hills o’ershadowing orchard plains
While sighed the airs ineffable, the breeze
That soft and low, lulls the Hesperides.
Hither the heroes came, the godlike race
Of seer divine, to whom a destined place
Lay in Olympus, doomed withal to toil
In this mid-world, to learn the battles’ moil
And the swift shock of pain; in wrath and dearth
In flood and famine o’er the fortressed earth
To drink the dregs of their un-godlike truth
And he, the first, the mighty Herakles
When in fierce toil he crossed the Tamir seas.
Steered ‘neath thy shadow, he the chief, the king,
Large-eyed, hood-pointed, girt and threatening.
The lustres poised, our charge, hot-foot with time
Laid grasping hands on men, no more sublime
They entered Argos, manned with fewer hands
Flit by the shores of the low summer lands.
On perilous quest unknown, nor more the sweep
Of man divine stirred the resounding deep,
Then flashed the gleam of gold from heart and head
Of the hozed warrior, fierce and helmeted.
Now shone the sun of mom on laden prow
Slow drifting with the tide beneath thy brow
Of pillared-rock; all thronged the deck with those
Hard to endure the battering war of woes.
On land and deep, keen-faced and wet with rain
Of sea and heaven, lushful of merchants’ gain,
No pilgrims of the earth. In bays forlorn
Where from its hills is the rude Tamar tom
And all the land with winds is scarred and worn.
There cast thy anchor and unloose their bales
And earn bare need of the affronting gales,
Or haply on more distant quest and strange
They drive their wine when winds of winter range
In the affrighted North, and daylight lie
O’er half the year, and the last twilight die
In gleams dawn, by iron coasts they run
Where steely ice lies bare to the cold sun.
Till on some tiresome mom they scan the low
Ribbed plains of white which to the worlds’ end go
And a lean white bear stalking in the snow.
They too have passed, and now from dawn to dawn
Flit forth ships, the loose-sailed galleys drawn
Henceforth the years are hot with war o’er thee
The strife of battle, the dark myriads flee,
