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(From The Lady of the Lake)
THE WESTERN waves of ebbing day | |
| Rolled o’er the glen their level way; | |
| Each purple peak, each flinty spire, | |
| Was bathed in floods of living fire. | |
| But not a setting beam could glow | 5 |
| Within the dark ravines below, | |
| Where twined the path in shadow hid, | |
| Round many a rocky pyramid, | |
| Shooting abruptly from the dell | |
| Its thunder-splintered pinnacle; | 10 |
| Round many an insulated mass, | |
| The native bulwarks of the pass, | |
| Huge as the tower which builders vain | |
| Presumptuous piled on Shinar’s plain. | |
| The rocky summits, split and rent, | 15 |
| Formed turret, dome, or battlement, | |
| Or seemed fantastically set | |
| With cupola or minaret, | |
| Wild crests as pagod ever decked, | |
| Or mosque of Eastern architect. | 20 |
| Nor were these earth-born castles bare, | |
| Nor lacked they many a banner fair; | |
| For, from their shivered brows displayed, | |
| Far o’er the unfathomable glade, | |
| All twinkling with the dew-drops sheen, | 25 |
| The brier-rose fell in streamers green, | |
| And creeping shrubs, of thousand dyes, | |
| Waved in the west-wind’s summer sighs. | |
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| Boon Nature scattered, free and wild, | |
| Each plant or flower, the mountain’s child. | 30 |
| Here eglantine embalmed the air, | |
| Hawthorn and hazel mingled there; | |
| The primrose pale and violet flower | |
| Found in each cliff a narrow bower; | |
| Foxglove and nightshade, side by side, | 35 |
| Emblems of punishment and pride, | |
| Grouped their dark hues with every stain | |
| The weather-beaten crags retain. | |
| With boughs that quaked at every breath, | |
| Gray birch and aspen wept beneath; | 40 |
| Aloft, the ash and warrior oak | |
| Cast anchor in the rifted rock; | |
| And, higher yet, the pine-tree hung | |
| His shattered trunk, and frequent flung, | |
| Where seemed the cliffs to meet on high, | 45 |
| His boughs athwart the narrowed sky. | |
| Highest of all, where white peaks glanced, | |
| Where glist’ning streamers waved and danced, | |
| The wanderer’s eye could barely view | |
| The summer heaven’s delicious blue; | 50 |
| So wondrous wild, the whole might seem | |
| The scenery of a fairy dream. | |
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| Onward, amid the copse ’gan peep | |
| A narrow inlet, still and deep, | |
| Affording scarce such breadth of brim | 55 |
| As served the wild duck’s brood to swim. | |
| Lost for a space, through thickets veering, | |
| But broader when again appearing, | |
| Tall rocks and tufted knolls their face | |
| Could on the dark blue mirror trace; | 60 |
| And farther as the hunter strayed, | |
| Still broader sweep its channels made. | |
| The shaggy mounds no longer stood, | |
| Emerging from entangled wood, | |
| But, wave-encircled, seemed to float, | 65 |
| Like castle girdled with its moat; | |
| Yet broader floods extending still | |
| Divide them from their parent hill, | |
| Till each, retiring, claims to be | |
| An islet in an inland sea. | 70 |
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| And now, to issue from the glen, | |
| No pathway meets the wanderer’s ken, | |
| Unless he climb, with footing nice, | |
| A far-projecting precipice. | |
| The broom’s tough roots his ladder made, | 75 |
| The hazel saplings lent their aid; | |
| And thus an airy point he won, | |
| Where, gleaming with the setting sun, | |
| One burnished sheet of living gold, | |
| Loch Katrine lay beneath him rolled, | 80 |
| In all her length far winding lay, | |
| With promontory, creek, and bay, | |
| And islands that, empurpled bright, | |
| Floated amid the livelier light, | |
| And mountains, that like giants stand, | 85 |
| To sentinel enchanted land. | |
| High on the south, huge Benvenue | |
| Down on the lake in masses threw | |
| Crags, knolls, and mounds, confusedly hurled, | |
| The fragments of an earlier world; | 90 |
| A wildering forest feathered o’er | |
| His ruined sides and summit hoar; | |
| While on the north, through middle air, | |
| Ben-an heaved high his forehead bare. | |
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