Alistair Elliot

We met a school, a family, or, we guessed, a little university of dolphins, that rolled around us, looking up with interest at the full sails that pulled us by so fast, with a sweet tickling, not the rub of engines.

I talked to them, but what have we to say to the smiling scholars of the Scottish coast? I was rude or boring. They took their children away

into the endless heaven of the sea,...

Behind the voices of di Stefano And Callas, others sing. I seem to hear In the same stream an earlier Lucia Filling another room with love and woe.

The fire, the sons, their parents smell of peat, The fume of family; their chairs scrape, on flags Awkwardly covered with the skins of stags; Is the wax cylinder too near the heat?

The sextet or the summers of their glen Stored up and now released...