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(From Night)
AGAIN, our evening’s meditation turns | |
| Not upon God, but on God-gifted man: | |
| Thus to Lincluden’s Abbey once we walked, | |
| In the mild twilight of a burning day, | |
| With one, a poet of the truest grain, | 5 |
| Who erst on Acksbeck’s Mount stood by the Fiend, | |
| And probed the sultry secrets of his heart. | |
| Autumn had barely touched the summer’s brow | |
| With one cool finger of her matron hand; | |
| The sky was clear and burnished in its depth, | 10 |
| While here and there an early star peeped through, | |
| Perplexed and bashful in her solitude. | |
| All in the vale was silent, save the Nith, | |
| Singing, we thought, some “owreturn” from her bard, | |
| Her long since dead but unforgotten Burns; | 15 |
| Her voice now “crooning,” in a lowly tone, | |
| The old lament upon “Drummossie Moor”; | |
| Now blithely breaking into “Auld Lang Syne”; | |
| Now, as it met some bold and battling rock, | |
| Rasping out “Scots wha hae wi’ Wallace bled”; | 20 |
| And now, as the lone Abbey drew anear, | |
| Moaning some unintelligible dirge, | |
| Like the “Bard’s Elegy” by river sung; | |
| And then, the river left, the ruin rose, | |
| The same as when the form of Liberty | 25 |
| Appeared, and dauntless met his kindling eye; | |
| The while the fox was howling on the hill, | |
| And the dim distant echo gave reply. | |
| We entered with hushed hearts the ruined fane,— | |
| When, lo! as if with sudden hand, a torch | 30 |
| Some spirit of the night had lifted up, | |
| To show us all the secrets of the pile, | |
| The full large yellow moon of harvest rose, | |
| And filled the oriel window with her form, | |
| And poured a soft and softening smile around. | 35 |
| Often we thought the poet’s troubled soul | |
| Has held a tryste here with that lovely moon, | |
| And oft his sad eye has been soothed by hers; | |
| Till, as he turned his lingering footsteps home, | |
| Came rushing back the joys of early youth, | 40 |
| And he his poverty and woe forgot, | |
| And was again the happy boy of Doon, | |
| In ’s hand the sickle, on his lips the song, | |
| And in his heart the first pure gush of love. | |
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