Rosamund Marriott Watson – Darkling, I Listen

After Sunset by Rosamund Marriott Watson

The black downs tower to westward

A tomb for the buried sun,

The flats of the water meadows

Are fading from green to dun.

Dark spreads the vast arena,

Swart on the yellow light,

And out of the gloom and the silence

A strange voice cries to the night.

Cries — and a strange voice answers,

Sudden, and hoarse, and slow.

Heavy with pain past telling.

The weight of a monstrous woe.

Still, as I wait and hearken,

I know not which they may be;

Voices of down and marshland.

Or the voice of my heart in me.

But I know that the cry they echo

Was old when the world was young,

The plaint of a nameless sorrow

Whose speech is an unknown tongue.

A Ballad of the Were-Wolf by Rosamund Marriott Watson

The gudewife sits i’ the chimney-neuk,
An’ looks on the louping flame;
The rain fa’s chill, and the win’ ca’s shrill,
Ere the auld gudeman comes hame.

“Oh, why is your cheek sae wan, gudewife?
An’ why do ye glower on me?
Sae dour ye luik i’ the chimney-neuk,
Wi’ the red licht in your e’e!

“Yet this nicht should ye welcome me,
This ae nicht mair than a’,
For I hae scotched yon great grey wolf
That took our bairnies twa.

“‘Twas a sair, sair strife for my very life,
As I warstled there my lane;
But I’ll hae her heart or e’er we part,
Gin ever we meet again.

“An’ ’twas ae sharp stroke o’ my bonny knife
That gar’d her baud awa’;
Fu’ fast she went out-owre the bent
Wi’outen her right fore-paw.

“Gae tak’ the foot o’ the drumlie brute,
And hang it upo’ the wa’;
An’ the next time that we meet, gudewife,
The tane of us shall fa’.”

He’s flung his pouch on the gudewife’s lap,
I’ the firelicht shinin’ fair,
Yet naught they saw o’ the grey wolf’s paw.
For a bluidy hand lay there.

O hooly, hooly rose she up,
Wi’ the red licht in her e’e,
Till she stude but a span frae the auld gudeman
Whiles never a word spak’ she.

But she stripped the claiths frae her lang richt arm,
That were wrappit roun’ and roun’,
The first was white, an’ the last was red;
And the fresh bluid dreeped adown.

She stretchit him out her lang right arm,
An’ cauld as the deid stude he.
The flames louped bricht i’ the gloamin’ licht —
There was nae hand there to see!