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(From The Angler)
THROUGH the deep glen of Roslin—where arise | |
| Proud castle and chapelle of high St. Clair, | |
| And Scotland’s prowess speaking—we had traced | |
| The mazy Esk by caverned Hawthornden, | |
| Perched like an eagle’s nest upon the cliffs, | 5 |
| And eloquent for aye with Drummond’s song; | |
| Through Melville’s flowery glades; and down the park | |
| Of fair Dalkeith, scaring the antlered deer, | |
| ’Neath the huge oaks of Morton and of Monk, | |
| Whispering, as stir their boughs the midnight winds. | 10 |
| These left behind, with purpling evening, now | |
| We stood beside St. Michael’s holy fane, | |
| With its nine centuries of gravestones girt; | |
| And from the slopes of Inveresk gazed down | |
| Upon the Firth of Forth, whose waveless tide | 15 |
| Glowed like a plain of fire. In majesty, | |
| O’ercanopied with many-vestured clouds, | |
| The mighty sun, low in the farthest west, | |
| With orb dilated, o’er the Grampian chain, | |
| Mountain up-piled on mountain, huge and blue, | 20 |
| Was shedding his last rays adown the shores | |
| Of Fife, with all its towns and woods and fields, | |
| And bathing Ben-Ean and Ben-Ledi’s peaks | |
| In hues of amethyst. Ray after ray, | |
| From the twin Lomond’s conic heights declined, | 25 |
| And died away the glory; and at length, | |
| As sank the last, low horizontal beams, | |
| And Twilight drew her azure curtains round, | |
| From out the south twinkled the evening star. | |
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