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* * * * * AWAY | |
| From the sea-murmur ceaseless, up between | |
| The green secluding hills, that hem it round | |
| As ’t were with conscious love, stands Kelburn House, | |
| With its gray turrets, in baronial state, | 5 |
| A proud memento of the days when men | |
| Thought but of war and safety. Stately pile | |
| And lovely woods! not often have mine eyes | |
| Gazed o’er a scene more picturesque, or more | |
| Heart-touching in its beauty. Thou wert once | 10 |
| The guardian of these valleys, and the foe | |
| Approaching heard, between himself and thee, | |
| The fierce, down-thundering, mocking waterfall; | |
| While, on thy battlements, in glittering mail, | |
| The warder glided; and the sentinel, | 15 |
| As neared the stranger horseman to thy gates, | |
| And gave the password, which no answer found, | |
| Plucked from his quiver the unerring shaft, | |
| Which, from Kilwinning’s spire, had oft brought down | |
The mock Papingo.
Mournfully, alas! | 20 |
| Yet in thy quietude not desolate, | |
| Now, like a relic of the times gone by, | |
| Down from thy verdant throne, upon the sea, | |
| Which glitters like a sheet of molten gold, | |
| Thou lookest thus, at eventide, while sets, | 25 |
| In opal and in amethystine hues, | |
| The day o’er distant Arran, with its peaks | |
| Sky-piercing, yet o’erclad with winter’s snows | |
| In desolate grandeur; and the cottaged fields | |
| Of nearer Bute smile in their vernal green, | 30 |
| A picture of repose. High overhead | |
| The gull, far-shrieking, through yon stern ravine | |
| Of wild, rude rocks, where brawls the mountain stream, | |
| Wings to the sea, and seeks, beyond its foams, | |
| Its own precipitous cliff upon the coast | 35 |
| Of fair and fertile Cumbrae; while the rook, | |
| Conscious of coming eventide, forsakes | |
| The leafing woods, and round the chimneyed roofs | |
| Caws as he wheels, alights, and then anon | |
| Renews his circling flight in clamorous joy. | 40 |
| |
| Mountains that face bald Arran! though the sun | |
| Now, with the ruddy lights of eventide, | |
| Gilds every pastoral summit on which Peace, | |
| Like a descended angel, sits enthroned, | |
| Forth gazing on a scene as beautiful | 45 |
| As Nature e’er outspread for mortal eye; | |
| And but the voice of distant waterfall | |
| Sings lullaby to bird and beast, and wings | |
| Of insects murmurous, multitudinous, | |
| That in the low, red, level beams commix, | 50 |
| And weave their elfin dance,—another time | |
| And other tones were yours, when on each peak | |
| At hand, and through Argyle and Lanark shires, | |
| Startling black midnight, flared the beacon lights, | |
| And when from out the west the castled steep | 55 |
| Of Broadwick reddened with responsive blaze. | |
| A night was that of doubt and of suspense, | |
| Of danger and of daring, in the which | |
| The fate of Scotland in the balance hung | |
| Trembling, and up and down wavered the scales; | 60 |
| But Hope grew brighter with the rising sun, | |
| And Dawn looked out, to see upon the shore | |
| The Brace’s standard floating on the gale, | |
| A call to freedom!—barks from every isle | |
| Pouring with clumps of spears!—from every dell | 65 |
| The throng of mail-clad men!—vassal and lord, | |
| With ponderous curtal-axe, and broadsword keen, | |
| Banner and bow; while, overhead, afar | |
| And near, the bugles rang amid the rocks, | |
| Echoing in wild reverberation shrill, | 70 |
| And scaring from his heathery lair the deer, | |
| The osprey from his island cliff of rest. * * * * * | |
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