Or what you will,
Whose intangible touch of awe
Makes reason nil.

Many a night I start,
Sudden awake,
Feeling my smothered heart
Flutter and quake;

Like an aspen at dead of noon,
When not a breath
Is stirring to trouble the boon
Valley. A wraith

Or a fetch, it must be, shivers
The soul of the tree
Till every leaf of it quivers.
And so with me.

Was it the shuffle of feet
I heard go by,
With muffled drums in the street?
Was it the cry

Of a rider riding the night
Into ashes and dawn,
With news in his nostrils and fright
Where his hoof-beats had gone?

Did the pipes, at "Bonny Dundee,"