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| STRANGER! gaze round thee on a woodland scene | |
| Of fairy loveliness, all unsurpassed. | |
| In gulfy amphitheatre the boughs | |
| Of many-foliaged stems engird thy path | |
| With emerald gloom; the shelving, steepy banks, | 5 |
| With eglantine and hawthorn blossomed o’er, | |
| And a flush undergrowth of primroses, | |
| Lychnes, and daffodils, and harebells blue, | |
| Of summer’s liberal bounty mutely tell. | |
| From frowning rocks piled up precipitous, | 10 |
| With scanty footing topples the huge oak, | |
| Tossing his arms abroad; and, fixed in clefts, | |
| Where gleams at intervals a patch of sward, | |
| The hazel throws his silvery branches down, | |
| Fringing with grace the dark-brown battlements. | 15 |
| Look up, and lo! o’er all, yon castled cliff,— | |
| Its roof is lichened o’er, purple and green, | |
| And blends its gray walls with coeval trees: | |
| There “Jonson sate in Drummond’s classic shade”: | |
| The mazy stream beneath is Roslin’s Esk,— | 20 |
| And what thou lookest on is Hawthornden! | |
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| Firm is the mansion’s basement on the rock: | |
| Beneath there yawns a many-chambered cave, | |
| With dormitory, and hollow well, and rooms | |
| Scooped by the hands of men. From its slant mouth, | 25 |
| Bramble-o’ergrown, facing the river bed, | |
| Through Scotland’s troublous times, in days of Eld, | |
| When Tyranny held rule, oft have the brave, | |
| Who dared not show themselves in open day, | |
| Seen the red sunset on yon high tree-tops, | 30 |
| As twilight with blue darkness filled the glen; | |
| Or with lone taper, in its pitchy womb, | |
| Biding their time, around Dalwolsey sate, | |
| And mourned the rust that dimmed each patriot sword. | |
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| Nor pass unmarked that bough-embosomed nook | 35 |
| Beside thee,—in the rock a cool recess, | |
| Christened immortally The Cypress Grove, | |
| By him who pondered there. ’T was to that spot, | |
| So sad, yet lovely in its solitude, | |
| That Drummond, the historian and the bard, | 40 |
| The noble and enlightened, from the world | |
| Withdrew to wisdom, and the holy lore, | |
| At night, at noon, in tempest or in calm, | |
| Which Nature teaches,—for, a wounded deer, | |
| Early he left the herd, and strayed alone: | 45 |
| While dreaming lovely dreams, in buoyant youth, | |
| Even mid the splendors of unclouded noon, | |
| Had fallen the sudden shadow on his heart, | |
| That lived but in another, whom Death took, | |
| Blighting his fond affections in their spring. | 50 |
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| Through years of calm and bright philosophy, | |
| Making this earth a type of Paradise, | |
| He sojourned mid these lone and lovely scenes,— | |
| Lone, listening from afar the murmurous din | |
| Of Life’s loud bustle; as an eremite, | 55 |
| In sylvan haunt remote, when housed the bees, | |
| And silent all except the nightingale, | |
| Whom fitful song awakes, at eve may hear, | |
| Dream-like, the boom of the far-distant sea: | |
| And in that cave he strung and struck his lyre, | 60 |
| Waking such passionate tones to love and Heaven, | |
| That from her favorite haunt, the sunny South, | |
| From Arno and Vaucluse, the Muse took wing, | |
| And fixed her dwelling-place on Celtic shores. | |
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