A brooding pond in the hush of dusk,
As black as the pools of night;
Rimmed round with spires of somber spruce--
Gaunt ghosts in the phantom light. A beating of heavy wings in the dark;
A rush from the dismal glen;
A sudden swoop, and the leaden wings
Went beating back again. In the utter gloom of that sunken land,
Never a creature stirred,
As night beat into the sullen swamp
With the wings of that ghostly bird.