These, too, thou’lt sing! for well thy magic Muse
  Can to the topmost heaven of grandeur soar! 
  Or stoop to wail the swain that is no more! 
  Ah, homely swains! your homeward steps ne’er lose;
  Let not dank Will mislead you to the heath: 
  Dancing in mirky night, o’er fen and lake,
  He glows, to draw you downward to your death,
  In his bewitched, low, marshy willow brake!]
  What though far off, from some dark dell espied,
  His glimmering mazes cheer th’ excursive sight,
  Yet turn, ye wanderers, turn your steps aside,
  Nor trust the guidance of that faithless light;
  For, watchful, lurking ‘mid th’ unrustling reed,
  At those mirk hours the wily monster lies,
  And listens oft to hear the passing steed,
  And frequent round him rolls his sullen eyes,
  If chance his savage wrath may some weak wretch surprise.

  VII

  Ah, luckless swain, o’er all unblest indeed! 
  Whom, late bewildered in the dank, dark fen,
  Far from his flocks and smoking hamlet then,
  To that sad spot [where hums the sedgy weed:]
  On him, enraged, the fiend, in angry mood,
  Shall never look with Pity’s kind concern,
  But instant, furious, raise the whelming flood
  O’er its drowned bank, forbidding all return. 
  Or, if he meditate his wished escape
  To some dim hill that seems uprising near,
  To his faint eye the grim and grisly shape,
  In all its terrors clad, shall wild appear. 
  Meantime, the watery surge shall round him rise,
  Poured sudden forth from every swelling source. 
  What now remains but tears and hopeless sighs? 
  His fear-shook limbs have lost their youthly force,
  And down the waves he floats, a pale and breathless corse.

  VIII

  For him, in vain, his anxious wife shall wait,
  Or wander forth to meet him on his way;
  For him, in vain, at to-fall of the day,
  His babes shall linger at th’ unclosing gate. 
  Ah, ne’er shall he return!  Alone, if night
  Her travelled limbs in broken slumbers steep,
  With dropping willows dressed, his mournful sprite
  Shall visit sad, perchance, her silent sleep: 
  Then he, perhaps, with moist and watery hand,
  Shall fondly seem to press her shuddering cheek,
  And with his blue-swoln face before her stand,
  And, shivering cold, these piteous accents speak: 
  ’Pursue, dear wife, thy daily toils pursue
  At dawn or dusk, industrious as before;
  Nor e’er of me one hapless thought renew,
  While I lie weltering on the oziered shore,
  Drowned by the kelpie’s wrath, nor e’er shall aid thee more!’

  IX

  Unbounded is thy range; with varied style
  Thy Muse may, like those feathery tribes which spring
  From their rude rocks, extend her skirting wing
  Round the moist marge of each cold Hebrid isle
  To that hoar pile which still its ruin