POETRY.
WILD SWANS.
Tama is seldom a footfall beside our dark water That hill shadows bathe in and bulrushes shroud; No playmates are here for this lonely king's daughter Save the wailing grey gull or the wandering cloud.
But this morning, where roselight and opal lay blended, With musical clangour and wide spread,of wings, A flight of white swans on the dawn-wind descended And breasted the loch into rose-coloured rings.
What quest do they follow? Where tends their long journey? Will they fade with the sunset, melt out with the moon? Are they knights with those white plumes a-toss for a tourney, Called South to the lists in some distant lagoon?
Are they elves of the moorland, heath-folk or hill fairies That ride through the night-wrack to rest with the morn? Have they brought us from sombre Loch Skene or St. Mary's Some magic of Yarrow wing-wafted and borne?
As I watch them at ease I can think of them only, Dim wraiths through the tears that the dawn mist distils, As exiles returned by long sky-ways and lonely: The Souls of dead hill-men come home to their hills.
WILL H. OC/LVIE.
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