The Trossachs

Sleep! the deer is in his den;

Sleep! thy hounds are by thee lying:
Sleep! nor dream in yonder glen
How thy gallant steed lay dying.
Huntsman, rest! thy chase is done;
Think not of the rising sun,
For at dawning to assail ye
Here no bugles sound reveille.'

67

SIR WALTER SCOTT.

HEATHER

"O Caledonia! stern and wild!
Meet nurse for a poetic child!

Land of brown heath and shaggy wood,
Land of the mountain and the flood."

SCOTT, Lay of the Last Minstrel.

It may be that four-fifths of Scotland is unfit for cultivation but it seems that the Creator has made some compensation, for He gave to its people sons like Scott, Stevenson and Burns, and landscapes where mountains, moors, and lochs are filled with romance, legend, folklore and adventure. He also covered her hillside with heather, that serves sooner or later to draw every son of Scotland back to his native land.

All my life long I had longed to see heather

In the land of my kinsmen far over the seaNow here is heather like a wide purple ocean Rolling its tides toward me,

Dark, dipping waves of it, deeper than amethyst
When the gold day was begun―

Long, curving swells of it, dusky and lovely,
Here on the downs in the sun;

Or in a gray mist, sombre and wonderful,
Like a great twilight outspread

Far over earth that would meet with the heavens
Purple and wild overhead.

Now I am shaken by great storms of beauty
Wetting my eyelids with joy of my eyes;
Now is my soul like a wind-stricken sea bird
Troubling the deep with her cries!

MARGUERITE WILKINSON.

BELGIUM AND HOLLAND