All nations have their omens drear, 155
Their legends wild of woe and fear. 
To Cambria look—­the peasant see,
Bethink him of Glendowerdy,
And shun ‘the Spirit’s Blasted Tree.’ 
The Highlander, whose red claymore 160
The battle turn’d on Maida’s shore,
Will, on a Friday morn, look pale,
If ask’d to tell a fairy tale: 
He fears the vengeful Elfin King,
Who leaves that day his grassy ring:  165
Invisible to human ken,
He walks among the sons of men.

Did’st e’er, dear Heber, pass along
Beneath the towers of Franchemont,
Which, like an eagle’s nest in air, 170
Hang o’er the stream and hamlet fair? 
Deep in their vaults, the peasants say,
A mighty treasure buried lay,
Amass’d through rapine and through wrong
By the last Lord of Franchemont. 175
The iron chest is bolted hard,
A Huntsman sits, its constant guard;
Around his neck his horn is hung,
His hanger in his belt is slung;
Before his feet his blood-hounds lie:  180
An ’twere not for his gloomy eye,
Whose withering glance no heart can brook,
As true a huntsman doth he look,
As bugle e’er in brake did sound,
Or ever hollow’d to a hound. 185
To chase the fiend, and win the prize,
In that same dungeon ever tries
An aged Necromantic Priest;
It is an hundred years at least,
Since ’twixt them first the strife begun, 190
And neither yet has lost nor won. 
And oft the Conjurer’s words will make
The stubborn Demon groan and quake;
And oft the bands of iron break,
Or bursts one lock, that still amain, 195
Fast as ’tis open’d, shuts again. 
That magic strife within the tomb
May last until the day of doom,
Unless the Adept shall learn to tell
The very word that clench’d the spell, 200
When Franch’mont lock’d the treasure cell. 
An hundred years are pass’d and gone,
And scarce three letters has he won.

Such general superstition may
Excuse for old Pitscottie say; 205
Whose gossip history has given
My song the messenger from Heaven,
That warn’d, in Lithgow, Scotland’s King,
Nor less the infernal summoning;
May pass the Monk of Durham’s tale, 210
Whose Demon fought in Gothic mail;
May pardon plead for Fordun grave,
Who told of Gifford’s Goblin-Cave. 
But why such instances to you,
Who, in an instant, can renew 215
Your treasured hoards of various lore,
And furnish twenty thousand more? 
Hoards, not like theirs whose volumes rest
Like treasures in the Franch’mont chest,
While gripple owners still refuse 220
To others what they cannot use;