CAYLA! like voice of years gone by, | |
| I hear thy mountain melody: | |
| It comes with long-forgotten dreams | |
| Once cherished by thy wizard streams; | |
| And sings of school-boy rambles free, | 5 |
| And heart-felt young hilarity! | |
| I see the mouldering turrets hoar | |
| Dim-gleaming on thy woodland shore, | |
| Where oft, afar from vulgar eye, | |
| I loved at summer tide to lie; | 10 |
| Abandoned to the witching sway | |
| Of some old bard’s heroic lay; | |
| Or poring o’er the immortal story | |
| Of Roman and of Grecian glory. * * * * * | |
| But chief, when summer twilight mild | 15 |
| Drew her dim curtain o’er the wild, | |
| I loved beside that ruin gray | |
| To watch the dying gleam of day. | |
| And though, perchance, with secret dread, | |
| I heard the bat flit round my head, | 20 |
| While winds that waved the long lank grass | |
| With sound unearthly seemed to pass, | |
| Yet with a pleasing horror fell | |
| Upon my heart the thrilling spell; | |
| For all that met the eye or ear | 25 |
| Was still so pure and peaceful here, | |
| I deemed no evil might intrude | |
| Within the saintly solitude. | |
| Still vivid memory can recall | |
| The figure of each shattered wall; | 30 |
| The aged trees, all hoar with moss, | |
| Low-bending o’er the circling fosse; | |
| The rushing of the mountain flood; | |
| The cushats cooing in the wood; | |
| The rooks that o’er the turrets sail; | 35 |
| The lonely curlew’s distant wail; | |
| The flocks that high on Hounam rest; | |
| The glories of the glowing west. * * * * * | |
| |
