With vain endeavour, And memory of Earth's bitter leaven, But why to Him confine the prayer, When kindred thoughts and yearnings bear With all that live? The best of what we do and are, TO A HIGHLAND GIRL. AT INVERSNEYDE, UPON LOCH LOMOND. SWEET Highland Girl, a very shower Twice seven consenting years have shed Their utmost bounty on thy head: 60 65 And these grey rocks; that household lawn; 5 Those trees, a veil just half withdrawn ; This fall of water that doth make A murmur near the silent lake; This little bay; a quiet road That holds in shelter thy Abode Like something fashioned in a dream; ΙΟ 15 Here scattered, like a random seed, 30 And maidenly shamefacedness : Thou wear'st upon thy forehead clear What hand but would a garland cull 35 40 45 50 But I could frame a wish for thee Thou art to me but as a wave Of the wild sea; and I would have 55 I feel this place was made for her; Nor am I loth, though pleased at heart, GLEN ALMAIN; OR, THE NARROW GLEN. In this still place, remote from men, He sang Of stormy war, and violent death; 5 And should, methinks, when all was past, Where rocks were rudely heaped, and rent As by a spirit turbulent; Where sights were rough, and sounds were wild, And everything unreconciled; In some complaining, dim retreat, For fear and melancholy meet; But this is calm; there cannot be A more entire tranquillity. Does then the Bard sleep here indeed? What matters it? -I blame them not A convent, even a hermit's cell, It is not quiet, is not ease; But something deeper far than these: Is of the grave; and of austere 1803. 1Ο 15 20 25 30 STEPPING WESTWARD. While my Fellow-traveller and I were walking by the side of Loch Ketterine, one fine evening after sunset, in our road to a Hut where, in the course of our Tour, we had been hospitably entertained some weeks before, we met, in one of the loneliest parts of that solitary region, two well-dressed Women, one of whom said to us, by way of greeting, "What, you are stepping westward?" "What, you are stepping westward?"—"Yea." - 'T would be a wildish destiny, If we, who thus together roam In a strange Land, and far from home, The dewy ground was dark and cold; I liked the greeting; 't was a sound The voice was soft, and she who spake The salutation had to me The very sound of courtesy: Its power was felt; and while my eye 5 ΙΟ 15 20 25 1803 (?). |