If that I hate wild winter's spite-
The gibbet trees, the world in white,
The sky but gray wind over a grave -
Why should I ache, the season's slave?

I'll sing from the top of the orange-tree
Gramercy, winter's tyranny.

'I'll south with the sun, and keep my clime;
My wing is king of the summer-time;
My breast to the sun his torch shall hold;
And I'll call down through the green and
gold

Time, take thy scythe, reap bliss for me,
Bestir thee under the orange-tree.'

As a silver-wrought garment that clings to and follows the firm sweet limbs of a girl. Vanishing, swerving, evermore curving again into sight,

Softly the sand-beach wavers away to a dim gray looping of light.

And what if behind me to westward the wall of the woods stands high? The world lies east: how ample, the marsh and the sea and the sky!

A league and a league of marsh-grass, waisthigh, broad in the blade,

Green, and all of a height, and unflecked with a light or a shade,

Stretch leisurely off, in a pleasant plain,
To the terminal blue of the main.

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Oh, what is abroad in the marsh and the terminal sea?

Somehow my soul seems suddenly free From the weighing of fate and the sad discussion of sin,

By the length and the breadth and the

sweep of the marshes of Glynn.

Ye marshes, how candid and simple and nothing-withholding and free

Ye publish yourselves to the sky and offer yourselves to the sea!

Tolerant plains, that suffer the sea and the rains and the sun,

Ye spread and span like the catholic man who hath mightily won

God out of knowledge and good out of infinite pain

And sight out of blindness and purity out of a stain.

Theme

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As the marsh-hen secretly builds on the watery sod

Behold I will build me a nest on the great

ness of God:

will fly in the greatness of God as the marsh-hen flies

In the freedom that fills all the space 'twixt the marsh and the skies:

By so many roots as the marsh-grass sends

in the sod

I will heartily lay me a-hold on the greatness of God:

Oh, like to the greatness of God is the greatness within

The range of the marshes, the liberal marshes of Glynn.

Then Nan got a-tremble at nostril; she was the daintiest doe;

In the print of her velvet flank on the velvet fern

She reared, and rounded her ears in turn. Then the buck leapt up, and his head as a king's to a crown did go

Full high in the breeze, and he stood as if Death had the form of a deer;

And the two slim does long lazily stretching arose,

10

For their day-dream slowlier came to a close,

Till they woke and were still, breath-bound with waiting and wonder and fear.

Then Alan the huntsman sprang over the hillock, the hounds shot by,

The does and the ten-tined buck made a marvellous bound,

The hounds swept after with never a sound,

But Alan loud winded his horn in sign that the quarry was nigh.

For at dawn of that day proud Maclean of Lochbuy to the hunt had waxed wild,

And he cursed at old Alan till Alan fared

'Three does and a ten-tined buck made out,' spoke Hamish, full mild,

'And I ran for to turn, but my breach it was blown, and they passed;

I was weak, for ye called ere I broke me my fast.'

Cried Maclean: 'Now a ten-tined buck in the sight of the wife and the child 40

I had killed if the gluttonous kern had not wrought me a snail's own wrong!' Then he sounded, and down came kinsmen and clansmen all:

'Ten blows, for ten tine, on his back let fall,

And reckon no stroke if the blood follow not at the bite of thong!'

So Hamish made bare, and took him his strokes; at the last he smiled. Now I'll to the burn,' quoth Maclean, 'for it still may be,

If a slimmer-paunched henchman will hurry with me,

I shall kill me the ten-tined buck for a gift to the wife and the child!'

Then the clansmen departed, by this path and that; and over the hill Sped Maclean with an outward wrath for an inward shame;

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And that place of the lashing full quiet became;

And the wife and the child stood sad; and bloody-backed Hamish sat still.

But look! red Hamish has risen; quick about and about turns he.