How, winged with fate, their elf-shot arrows fly;
  When the sick ewe her summer food foregoes,
  Or, stretched on earth, the heart-smit heifers lie. 
  Such airy beings awe th’ untutored swain: 
  Nor thou, though learn’d, his homelier thoughts neglect;
  Let thy sweet Muse the rural faith sustain: 
  These are the themes of simple, sure effect,
  That add new conquests to her boundless reign,
  And fill, with double force, her heart-commanding strain.

  III

  Even yet preserved, how often may’st thou hear,
  Where to the pole the boreal mountains run,
  Taught by the father to his listening son,
  Strange lays, whose power had charmed a Spenser’s ear. 
  At every pause, before thy mind possessed,
  Old Runic bards shall seem to rise around,
  With uncouth lyres, in many-coloured vest,
  Their matted hair with boughs fantastic crowned: 
  Whether thou bid’st the well-taught hind repeat
  The choral dirge that mourns some chieftain brave,
  When every shrieking maid her bosom beat,
  And strewed with choicest herbs his scented grave;
  Or whether, sitting in the shepherd’s shiel,
  Thou hear’st some sounding tale of war’s alarms,
  When, at the bugle’s call, with fire and steel,
  The sturdy clans poured forth their bony swarms,
  And hostile brothers met to prove each other’s arms.

  IV

  ’Tis thine to sing, how, framing hideous spells,
  In Skye’s lone isle the gifted wizard seer,
  Lodged in the wintry cave with [Fate’s fell spear;]
  Or in the depth of Uist’s dark forests dwells: 
  How they whose sight such dreary dreams engross,
  With their own visions oft astonished droop,
  When o’er the watery strath of quaggy moss
  They see the gliding ghosts unbodied troop;
  Or if in sports, or on the festive green,
  Their [destined] glance some fated youth descry,
  Who, now perhaps in lusty vigour seen
  And rosy health, shall soon lamented die. 
  For them the viewless forms of air obey,
  Their bidding heed, and at their beck repair. 
  They know what spirit brews the stormful day,
  And, heartless, oft like moody madness stare
  To see the phantom train their secret work prepare.

  V

[To monarchs dear, some hundred miles astray, Oft have they seen Fate give the fatal blow!  The seer, in Skye, shrieked as the blood did flow, When headless Charles warm on the scaffold lay!  As Boreas threw his young Aurora forth, In the first year of the first George’s reign, And battles raged in welkin of the North, They mourned in air, fell, fell Rebellion slain!  And as, of late, they joyed in Preston’s fight, Saw at sad Falkirk all their hopes near crowned, They raved, divining, through their second sight, Pale, red Culloden, where these hopes were drowned!  Illustrious William!  Britain’s guardian name!  One William saved us from a tyrant’s stroke; He, for a sceptre, gained heroic fame; But thou, more glorious, Slavery’s chain hast broke, To reign a private man, and bow to Freedom’s yoke!

  VI