EERILY the wind doth blow
Through the woodland hollow;
Eërily forlorn and low,
Tremulous echoes follow!
Whence the low wind's tortured plaint?
Burden hopeless, dreary,
As the anguished tones that faint
Down the Miserere.
Whence? From far-off seas its moan!
Darksome waves and lonely,
Where the tempest, overblown,
Leaves a death-calm only.
Thence it caught the awful cry
Of some last pale swimmer,
O'er whose drowning brain and eye
Life grows dim and dimmer--
Ere the billows claim their prey,
Settling stern and lonely.
Where the storm-clouds, rolled away,
Leave death-silence only!
So with pain the wind-heart sighs;
Through its sad commotion
Weary sea-tides sob, and rise
Wailing hints of Ocean!
Hist! oh hist! as spreads the mist,
Wood and hill-slope doming,
By no grace of starlight kissed,
'Mid the shadowy gloaming,
Drearier grows the wind, more drear
Echoes shuddering follow,
Till a place of doom and fear
Seems that haunted hollow!
