Floated like feathery specks upon the wave.
The rower with his boat-hook struck the mast,
And lo! the myriad wings that like a sheet
Of snow o'erspread the crannies, - all were up!
The gannet, guillemot, and kittiwake,
Marrot and plover, snipe and eider-duck,
The puffin and the falcon and the gull,
Thousands on thousands, an innumerous throng,
Darkening the noontide with their winnowing plumes,
A cloud of animation! the wide air
Tempesting with their mingled cries uncouth!
Words cannot tell the sense of loneliness
Which then and there, cloud-like, across my soul
Fell, as our weary steps clomb that ascent.
Amid encompassing mountains I have paused,
At twilight, when alone the little stars,
Brightening amid the wilderness of blue,
Proclaimed a world not God-forsaken quite;
I've walked, at midnight, on the hollow shore,
In darkness, when the trampling of the waves,
The demon-featured clouds, and howling gales,
Seemed like returning chaos, all the fierce
Terrific elements in league with night,
Earth crouching underneath their tyrannous sway,
And the lone sea-bird shrieking from its rock;
And I have mused in churchyards far remote,
And long forsaken even by the dead,
To blank oblivion utterly given o'er,
Beneath the waning moon, whose mournful ray Showed but the dim hawk sleeping on his stone: But never, in its moods of fantasy,
Had to itself my spirit shaped a scene
Of sequestration more profound than thine,
Grim throne of solitude, stupendous Bass!
Oft in the populous city, mid the stir
And strife of hurrying thousands, each intent
On his own earnest purpose, to thy cliffs
Sea-girt, precipitous, — the solan's home,
Wander my reveries; and thoughts of thee
(While scarcely stirs the ivy round the porch,
And all is silent as the sepulchre)
Oft make the hush of midnight more profound. David Macbeth Moir.
BEN ARTHUR, or the Cobbler, rises in great majesty and grandeur at the head of Loch Long to the height of 2,400 feet, his fantastic peak cracked and shattered into every conceivable form. From one point it resembles the figure of a cobbler. Hence the popular name of the mountain. Tourists' Guide.
AR away, up in his rocky throne,
The gaunt old Cobbler dwells alone.
Around his head the lightnings play,
Where he sits with his lapstone, night and day.
No one seeth his jerking awl,
No one heareth his hammer fall;
But what he doth when mists enwrap
The bald and barren mountain-top,
And cover him up from the sight of man,
No one knoweth, or ever can.
Oft in the night, when storms are loud,
He thunders from the drifting cloud,
And sends his voice o'er sea and lake
To bid his brother Bens awake;
And Lomond, Lawers, and Venue
Answer him back with wild halloo,
And Cruachan shouts from his splintered peaks,
And the straths respond when the monarch speaks,
And hill with hill and Ben with Ben
Talk wisdom-meaningless to men.
And oft he sings, this Cobbler old,
And his voice rings loud from his summits cold,
And the north-wind helps him with organ-swell,
And the rush of streams as they leap the fell.
But none interprets right or wrong
The pith and burden of his song,
Save one, a weird and crazy wight,
Oppressed with the gift of the second sight,
Who tells the shepherds of Glencroe
What the Cobbler thinks of our world below.
EN CRUACHAN is king of the mountains
That gird in the lovely Loch Awe;
Loch Ettive is fed from his fountains,
By the streams of the dark-rushing Awe.
With his peak so high
He cleaves the sky
That smiles on his old gray crown,
While the mantle green,
On his shoulders seen,
In many a fold flows down.
He looks to the north, and he renders
A greeting to Nevis Ben;
And Nevis, in white snowy splendors,
Gives Cruachan greeting again.
O'er dread Glencoe
The greeting doth go,
And where Ettive winds fair in the glen;
And he hears the call
All calm, in the midst of their bluster,
He stands with his forehead enorm.
When block on block,
With thundering shock,
Comes hurtled confusedly down,
No whit recks he,
But laughs to shake free
The dust from his old gray crown.
And while torrents on torrents are pouring
Down his sides with a wild, savage glee,
And when louder the loud Awe is roaring,
And the soft lake swells to a sea,
He smiles through the storm,
And his heart grows warm
As he thinks how his streams feed the plains, And the brave old Ben
Grows young again,
And swells with his lusty veins.
For Cruachan is king of the mountains
That gird in the lovely Loch Awe;
Loch Ettive is fed from his fountains,
By the streams of the dark-rushing Awe.
Ere Adam was made
He reared his head
Sublime o'er the green winding glen;
And when flame wraps the sphere,
O'er earth's ashes shall peer
The peak of the old granite Ben.
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