XXIV.

ON REVISITING DUNOLLY CASTLE.

8

[See former series, p. 16.]

THE captive Bird was gone ;-to cliff or moor
Perchance had flown, delivered by the storm;
Or he had pined, and sunk to feed the worm:
Him found we not; but, climbing a tall tower,
There saw, impaved with rude fidelity

Of art mosaic, in a roofless floor,

An Eagle with stretched wings, but beamless eye--
An Eagle that could neither wail nor soar.
Effigies of the Vanished, (shall I dare

To call thee so?) or symbol of past times,
That towering courage, and the savage deeds
Those times were proud of, take Thou too a share,
Not undeserved, of the memorial rhymes

That animate my way where'er it leads!

XXV.

THE DUNOLLY EAGLE.

NOT to the clouds, not to the cliff, he flew ;
But when a storm, on sea or mountain bred,
Came and delivered him, alone he sped
Into the Castle-dungeon's darkest mew.
Now, near his Master's house in open view
He dwells, and hears indignant tempests howl,
Kennelled and chained. Ye tame domestic Fowl,
Beware of him! Thou, saucy Cockatoo,

Look to thy plumage and thy life! - The Roe,
Fleet as the west wind, is for him no quarry;
Balanced in ether he will never tarry,

Eying the sea's blue depths. Poor Bird! even so
Doth Man of Brother-man a creature make,

That clings to slavery for its own sad sake.

XXVI.

CAVE OF STAFFA.

WE saw, but surely, in the motley crowd,
Not One of us has felt, the far-famed sight;
How could we feel it? each the other's blight,
Hurried and hurrying, volatile and loud.
O for those motions only that invite

The Ghost of Fingal to his tuneful Cave!
By the breeze entered, and wave after wave
Softly embosoming the timid light!

And by one Votary who at will might stand
Gazing, and take into his mind and heart,
With undistracted reverence, the effect

Of those proportions where the almighty hand
That made the worlds, the sovereign Architect,
Has deigned to work as if with human Art!

XXVII.

CAVE OF STAFFA.9

THANKS for the lessons of this Spot-fit school For the presumptuous thoughts that would assign Mechanic laws to agency divine;

And, measuring heaven by earth, would overrule
Infinite Power. The pillared vestibule,

Expanding yet precise, the roof embowed,
Might seem designed to humble Man, when proud
Of his best workmanship by plan and tool.
Down-bearing with his whole Atlantic weight
Of tide and tempest on the Structure's base,
And flashing upwards to its topmost height,
Ocean has proved its strength, and of its grace
In calms is conscious, finding for his freight
Of softest music some responsive place.

XXVIII.

CAVE OF STAFFA.

YE shadowy Beings, that have rights and claims cell of Fingal's mystic Grot,

In

every Where are ye? Driven or venturing to the spot, Our Fathers glimpses caught of your thin Frames, And, by your mien and bearing, knew your names; And they could hear his ghostly song who trod Earth, till the flesh lay on him like a load,

While he struck his desolate harp without hopes or aims.

Vanished ye are, but subject to recall;

Why keep we else the instincts whose dread law Ruled here of yore, till what men felt they saw, Not by black arts but magic natural !

If

eyes be still sworn vassals of belief,

Yon light shapes forth a Bard, that shade a Chief.