| |
| THE BIRDS have ceased their songs, | |
| All save the blackbird, that from yon tall ash, | |
| Mid Pinkie’s greenery, from his mellow throat, | |
| In adoration of the setting sun, | |
Chants forth his evening hymn.
’T is twilight now; | 5 |
| The sovran sun behind his western hills— | |
| His Grampian range of amethystine hue— | |
| In glory hath declined. The volumed clouds, | |
| Kissed by his kind effulgence, hang around, | |
| Like pillars of some tabernacle grand, | 10 |
| Worthy his mighty presence; while the sky, | |
| Illumined to its centre, glows intense, | |
| Changing the sapphire of its arch to gold. | |
| How deep is the tranquillity! yon wood | |
| Is slumbering through its multitude of stems, | 15 |
| Even to the leaflet on the frailest twig! | |
| A gentle gloom pervades the Birslie heights, | |
| An azure softness mingling with the sky; | |
| And westward, looking to the Morphoots dim, | |
| Grey Falsyde, like an aged sentinel, | 20 |
| Stands on the shoulder of his watch-tower green. | |
| Nor lovely less in its serenity | |
| The Forth, now waveless as a lake engulfed | |
| Mid sheltering hills; without a ripple spreads | |
| Its bosom, silent and immense; the hues | 25 |
| Of flickering light have from its surface died, | |
| Leaving it garbed in sunless majesty. | |
| No more is heard the plover’s circling wail, | |
| No more the silver of the sea-mew’s wing | |
| In casual dip beheld; on eastern Bass | 30 |
| The flocks of ocean slumber in their cells. | |
| The fisherman, forsaken by the tide, | |
| His shadow lost, drags to the yellow shore | |
| His cumbrous nets, and in the sheltering cove | |
| Behind yon rocky point his shallop moors, | 35 |
| To tempt again the perilous deep at dawn. | |
| With bosoming boughs round Musselburgh hang | |
| Its clumps of ancient elm-trees; silently | |
| Pierces the sky its immemorial spire, | |
| Whose curfew-bell, through many a century, | 40 |
| Glad sound, hath loosed the artisan from toil; | |
| And silently, o’er many a chimneyed roof, | |
| The smoke from many a cheerful hearth ascends, | |
| Melting in ether. * * * * * | |
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