Where is my Chief, my Master, this bleak night,
 mavrone!
O, cold, cold, miserably cold is this bleak night for
 Hugh,
It’s showery, arrowy, speary sleet pierceth one
 through and through,
Pierceth one to the very bone!
Rolls real thunder? Or was that red, livid light
Only a meteor? I scarce know; but through the
 midnight dim
The pitiless ice-wind streams. Except the hate
 that persecutes him
Nothing hath crueller venomy might.

An awful, a tremendous night is this, meseems!
The flood-gates of the rivers of heaven, I think,
 have been burst wide -
Down from the overcharged clouds, like unto
 headlong ocean’s tide,
Descends grey rain in roaring streams.

Though he were even a wolf ranging the round
 green woods,
Though he were even a pleasant salmon in the
 unchainable sea,
Though he were a wild mountain eagle, he could
 scarce bear, he,
This sharp, sore sleet, these howling floods.

O, mournful is my soul this night for Hugh Maguire!
Darkly, as in a dream, he strays! Before him and
 behind
Triumphs the tyrannous anger of the wounding wind,
The wounding wind, that burns as fire!

It is my bitter grief - it cuts me to the heart -
That in the country of Clan Darry this should be his fate!
O, woe is me, where is he? Wandering, houseless,
 desolate,
Alone, without or guide or chart!

Medreams I see just now his face, the strawberry
 bright,
Uplifted to the blackened heavens, while the
 tempestuous winds
Blow fiercely over and round him, and the smiting
 sleetshower blinds
The hero of Galang to-night!

Large, large affliction unto me and mine it is,
That one of his majestic bearing, his fair, stately
 form,
Should thus be tortured and o’erborne - that this
 unsparing storm

Should wreak its wrath on head like his!
That his great hand, so oft the avenger of the
 oppressed,
Should this chill, churlish night, perchance, be
 paralysed by frost -
While through some icicle-hung thicket - as one
 lorn and lost
He walks and wanders without rest.

The tempest-driven torrent deluges the mead,
It overflows the low banks of the rivulets andponds.
The lawns and pasture-grounds lie locked in icy bonds
So that the cattle cannot feed.

The pale bright margins of the streams are seen
 by none.
Rushes and sweeps along the untamable flood on
 every side -
It penetrates and fills the cottagers’ dwellings far
 and wide -
Water and land are blent in one.

Through some dark woods, ’mid bones of
 monsters, Hugh now strays.
As he confronts the storm with anguished heart,
 but manly brow
O! what a sword-wound to that tender heart of
 his were now
A backward glance at peaceful days.

But other thoughts are his - thoughts that can
 still inspire
With joy and an onward-bounding hope the
 bosom of Mac-Nee
Thoughts of his warriors charging like bright
 billows of the sea,
Borne on the wind’s wings, flashing fire!

And though frost glaze to-night the clear dew of
 his eyes.
And white ice-gauntlets glove his noble fine fair
 fingers o’er,
A warm dress is to him that lightning-garb he ever
 wore,
The lightning of the soul, not skies.

Avran: Hugh marched forth to the fight - I
 grieved to see him so depart;
And lo! to-night he wanders frozen, rain-drenched,
 sad, betrayed
But the memory of the limewhite mansions his right
 hand hath laid
In ashes, warms the hero’s heart!