XII. REST AND BE THANKFUL, AT THE HEAD OF GLENCROE. DOUBLING and doubling with laborious walk, And Fishes front, unmoved, the torrent's sweep, XIII. HIGHLAND HUT. SEE what gay wild flowers deck this earth-built Cot, Whose smoke, forth-issuing whence and how it may, Shines in the greeting of the Sun's first ray Like wreaths of vapour without stain or blot. And why shouldst thou? If rightly trained and bred, Which her Heaven-guided feet refuse to tread. Search, for their worth, some gentle heart wrong proof, Meek, patient, kind, and, were its trials fewer, Belike less happy.- Stand no more aloof! * *See Note, p. 38. XIV. THE BROWNIE. [Upon a small island not far from the head of Loch Lomond, are some remains of an ancient building, which was for several years the abode of a solitary Individual, one of the last survivors of the Clan of Macfarlane, once powerful in that neighbourhood. Passing along the shore opposite this island in the year 1814, the Author learned these particulars, and that this person then living there had acquired the appellation of " The Brownie." (See "The Brownie's Cell," in the Author's Poems, vol. ii. p. 237. ed. of 1832, to which the following Sonnet is a sequel.] "How disappeared he?' Ask the newt and toad; Ask of his fellow men, and they will tell How he was found, cold as an icicle, Under an arch of that forlorn abode ; Where he, unpropp'd, and by the gathering flood With no one near save the omnipresent God. A choice that wears the aspect of a doom; But in the mould of mercy all is cast For Souls familiar with the eternal Voice ; Drove from itself, we trust, all frightful gloom. XV. TO THE PLANET VENUS, AN EVENING STAR. COMPOSED AT LOCH LOMOND. THOUGH joy attend thee orient at the birth To watch thy course when Day-light, fled from earth, And splendour slowly mustering. Since the Sun, Relinquished half his empire to the Host XVI. BOTHWELL CASTLE. IMMURED in Bothwell's Towers, at times the Brave (So beautiful is Clyde) forgot to mourn The liberty they lost at Bannockbourn. Once on those steeps I roamed at large, and have Better to thank a dear and long-past day For joy its sunny hours were free to give Than blame the present, that our wish hath crost. Memory, like Sleep, hath powers which dreams obey, Dreams, vivid dreams, that are not fugitive: How little that she cherishes is lost! |