Three Ghosts that haunt me have I, Three Ghosts in my soul that fight,Three grandsire Ghosts in my soul, That haunt me by day and by night.
The first was a dark mountaineer, Who hunted with arrow and knife,To whom the turf was a bed, And the wind of the moorland was life.
And the next was a mariner rude, Whose home and whose grave was the sea,For whom the land was a prison And only the ocean was free.
And the last was a shrunken recluse, Who lived with the dust and the gloomAnd wrote of the Saints and of Him Who went for us to His doom.
And all through the days and years These ancient Ghosts contend,And my soul is a battle-field Of passions that pierce and rend.
And whenever a sunbeam alights All gleaming and fresh on my page,I am wild for the hills and the bush, I am torn with the hunter's rage.
I am sick of the smell of a book, I am off with the dogs or a gun,Or I gallop my fifty miles Before the set of the sun.
And yet from some loftier peak When I catch the scent of the wave,When I look on the sea from afar, I feel like one in a grave;
And I long for a ship full-sailed And an ocean wide on the lee--I choke on the solid land For the lift of the undulant sea.
Yet ever the battle goes on, And ever there rises a dayWhen the Ghosts of the wave and the wood To the Ghost of the cell give way.
Then the land is a wilderness drear, And dismal and vast is the sea,But cloistered in peace with my books My soul is uplifted and free.
Three Ghosts that haunt me have I, Three Ghosts in my soul that fight,Three grandsire Ghosts in my soul, That haunt me by day and by night.
Yet ofttimes there joins in the fray One gross and sluggish of limb,No spectre is he but a man, Whose strokes are heavy and grim.
For a man is not nothing, I swear, Nor a braggart am I when I boastThat though he be slothful or sleep, A man is more than a ghost.
And my soul is my own, I aver, The master and lord of it I,And whenever I will to bestir, All ghostly usurpers shall fly.
Then I what is mine will assume, Nor diverge from the path of my will.Though the Ghosts I have routed still call From the desk and the sea and the hill.
