| |
| AS in the babbling crowd where gossips meet, | |
| Some quiet heart maintains itself alone— | |
| Or grass-grown alley off the trampled street— | |
| Glen-Messen lies unknown. | |
| |
| The visitors of summer come and go, | 5 |
| With many a far-famed scene within their ken; | |
| But even their books of travel do not know | |
| This almost nameless glen. | |
| |
| I got its being and its name from one | |
| Who loves to brood on beauty near at home, | 10 |
| And, haply, garners more, when all is done, | |
| Than those who farther roam. | |
| |
| It was a golden summer day, and Clyde, | |
| From shore to shore, was all one molten flame; | |
| The Holy Loch, stilled with the swollen tide, | 15 |
| Was hallowed as its name. | |
| |
| As up its southern marge I slowly strayed, | |
| I heard the measured dip of unseen oar, | |
| And even the prattling children as they played | |
| Upon the further shore. | 20 |
| |
| Up by the placid loch, which, far beneath, | |
| Bosomed the summer beauty of the skies, | |
| I reached its upper shores, then took the heath, | |
| For there Glen-Messen lies. * * * * * | |
| The hills shut out the world with all its noise, | 25 |
| Shut in the murmur of the hidden stream; | |
| And only once a hawk, with sudden poise, | |
| Uttered a sudden scream. | |
| |
| The little glen was all in dreamy hush: | |
| But soon a muffled rumble, soft and deep, | 30 |
| And then the cataract’s imperious rush | |
| Awoke it from its sleep. | |
| |
| Adown the glen the burn shot in and out | |
| Beneath the shelving rocks, and where it stayed | |
| In quiet crystal pools, the speckled trout | 35 |
| In dimpling eddies played. | |
| |
| Here, through a rocky sluice the waters bored; | |
| There, round and round in boiling caldron wheeled; | |
| And up the cataract, like a flashing sword, | |
| The silvery salmon spieled. | 40 |
| |
| Like a deep thinker, in himself entombed, | |
| Stood on a stone the solitary hern; | |
| While all around the purple heather bloomed, | |
| And waved the feathery fern. | |
| |
| The long, long summer day, in sun and shade, | 45 |
| I lingered there; but years have gone since then, | |
| And many a pilgrimage in thought I ’ve made, | |
| To wander in the glen. | |
| |
| All Nature finds in man a counterpart: | |
| She takes her spell-bound lover by the hand, | 50 |
| And makes him one with that mysterious heart | |
| That beats through sea and land. | |
| |
