Lomond's proud mountains, where the summer snow,
In faint blue wreaths, "congeals the lap of May;" -
And Teviot's banks, where flowers of fairy blow, –
Could'st thou with cold unraptur'd eye survey,
Nor wake to bardish notes the bosom-thrilling lay?
What though by Selma's blazing oak no more
The bards of Fingal wake the trembling string;
Still to the sea-breeze sad they nightly sing
The dirge forlorn on ancient Morven's shore;
And still, in every hazel-tangled dell,
The hoary swain's traditionary lay
Can point the place where Morven's heroes fell,
And where their
mossy tombs are crusted gray.
The mountain rock, to shepherds only known,
Retains the stamp of Fingal's giant heel;
The rough round crag, by rocking storms o'erthrown,
The swain misdeems some ancient chariot wheel.
On those brown steeps where the shy red deer play,
And wanton roes, unscar'd by hunter, roam,
Sat Morven's maids o'er the smooth dimpling bay,
To see their barks, from Lochlin oaring home,
Rush like the plunging whale through ocean's bursting
foam.
The heath, where once the venom-bristled boar
Pierc'd by the spear of mighty Dermid fell
The martial youth secur'd by many a spell,*
Who long in fight the shaggy goat-skin wore.
Him, far in northern climes, a female bore
Where the red heath slopes gradual to the main, Where boreal billows lash the latest shore,
And murky night begins her sullen reign.
So soft the purple glow his cheek could boast,
It seem'd the spiky grass might grave a scar,
Yet, foremost still of Fingal's victor host,
He strode tremendous in the van of war.
He sunk not till the doubtful field was won,
Though life-blood steep'd his shaggy vest in gore, When, to a clime between the wind and sun, Him to his weird dame the heroes bore, Whose plastic arts did soon her valiant son restore.
The magic shores of Ketterin's silver lake,†
Where shuddering beauty struggles to beguile
* Alluding to the Gaelic legend of the Celtic Ladbrog. + Vide Scott's Glenfinlas.
The frown of horror to an awful smile,
May well thy harp's sublimest strains awake.
There the Green Sisters of the haunted heath
Have strew'd with mangled limbs their frightful den;
And work with rending fangs the stranger's death,
Who treads with lonely foot dark Finlas' glen.
Lur'd from his wattled shiel on Ketterin's side,
The youthful hunter trode the pathless brake,
No pilot star, impetuous love his guide,
But ne'er return'd to Ketterin's fatal lake.
Still one remains his hapless fate to tell,
The visionary chief of gifted eye,
Wild on the wind he flings each potent spell,
Which ill-starr'd mortals only hear to die—
Far from his wizard notes the fell Green Sisters fly.
SWEET power of Love! no idle fluttering boy
Art thou, to flaunt with brilliant purple wing,
And from thy bow, in merry mischief, fling
The tiny shafts which mortal peace destroy.
"Tis thine the sickness of the soul to heal,
When pines the lonely bosom, doom'd to know
No dear associate of its joy or woe,
Till, warm'd by thee, it learns again to feel.
As the bright sun-beam bids the rose unrol
Her scented leaves, that sleep in many a fold,
Thou wak'st the heart from selfish slumbers cold,
To all the generous softness of the soul.
Ah doubly blest the heart that wakes to prove
From some congenial breast the dear return of Love!
WRITTEN IN THE ISLE OF SKY,
Ат eve, beside the ringlet's haunted green
I linger oft, while o'er my lonely head
The aged rowan hangs her berries red;
For there, of old, the merry elves were seen,
Pacing with printless feet the dewy grass ;
And there I view, in many a figur'd train,
The marshall'd hordes of sea-birds leave the main, And o'er the dark-brown moors hoarse-shrieking pass. Next in prophetic pomp along the heath
I see dim forms their shadowy bands arrange, Which seem to mingle in encounter strange, To work with glimmering blades the work of death: In fancy's eye their meteor falchions glare;
But, when I move, the hosts all melt in liquid air.
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