Poem by Thomas Aird

Song the Fourth

Drear, at the droop of day,
The nettle-wands, all wintry bare,
Sigh in our kirkyard old and lone!
That bowing stranger gray,
What seeks he there?
Sunk in the nettles, moss-o'ergrown,
He finds a flat memorial stone.
Kneeling, he picks the frozen moss away;
There be the lettered names:
“My father!” he exclaims;
“Mother, O mother!” Many a tear
Is dropping on the names so dear.

Floods of the thaws of night!
Yon hills, how blear, in raw dun vapour stand.
Ribs of old snow, glazed bluely white,
Indent the sodden land.

Look up! those leafy openings through,
What liquid gulfs of living blue!
“Look up, O sunken face,”
Quoth June in her sweet grace,
“Drink my blue day and live, my day so balmy blue!”

Yon pine with blasted head
Stands, raven-topped, nailed on the moon so red,—
Hung on the southern heath, so large and round and red.
There graves of suicides be.
Hags, posters of the midnight air,
At witching-time hold synod there.
But see! oh see
The troubled ground, the ghosts uprising through
In hoary, bloodless, thin-compounded dew,
With struggling spots: their shivering lips emit
A feeble whistling as around they flit.
Bending, the bird of ordinance
Croaks music to the mingled dance.
Such tales of thee, weird fell,
Old knitters tell. 

1. Song the Seventh
2. Fitte the First
3. My Mother's Grave
4. To the Memory of a City Pastor
5. Song the Twelfth

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