Five bards passing the night in the house of a chief, who was a poet himself, went severally to make their observations on, and returned with an extempore description of, night.

First Bard: Night is dull and dark. / The clouds rest on the hills. / No star with green trembling beam; / no moon looks from the sky. / I hear the blast in the wood, / but I hear it distant far. / The stream of the valley murmurs; / but its murmur is sullen and sad. / From the tree at the grave of the dead / the long-howling owl is heard. / I see a dim form on the plain! It is a ghost! / It fades, it flies. / Some funeral shall pass this way: the meteor marks the path. The distant dog is howling from the hut of the hill. / The stag lies on the mountain moss: / the hind is at his side. / She hears the wind in his branchy horns. / She starts, but lies again. The roe is in the cleft of the rock; / the heath-cock's head is beneath his wing. / No beast, no bird is abroad, / but the owl and the howling fox: / she on a leafless tree; / he in a cloud on the hill. Dark, panting, trembling, sad, / the traveller has lost his way. / Through shrubs, through thorns, / he goes along the gurgling rill. / He fears the rock and the fen. / He fears the ghost of night. / The old tree groans to the blast; / the falling branch resounds. / The wind drives the withered burrs, / clung together, along the grass. / It is the light tread of a ghost! / He trembles amidst the night. Dark, dusky, howling, is night, / cloudy, windy, and full of ghosts! / The dead are abroad! / My friends, receive me from the night.

Second Bard: The wind is up, the shower descends. / The spirit of the mountain shrieks. / Woods fall from on high. Windows flap.