| |
| WHILE down the lake’s translucent tide | |
| With gently curving course we glide, | |
| Its silver ripples, faint and few, | |
| Alternate blend with belts of blue, | |
| As fleecy clouds, on pinions white, | 5 |
| Careering fleck the welkin bright. | |
| But lo! Ben Lomond’s awful crown | |
| Through shrouding mists looks dimly down; | |
| For though perchance his piercing eye | |
| Doth read the secrets of the sky, | 10 |
| His haughty bosom scorns to show | |
| Those secrets to the world below. | |
| Close-woven shades, with varying grace, | |
| And crag and cavern, mark his base, | |
| And trees, whose naked roots protrude | 15 |
| From bed of rock and lichens rude; | |
| And where, mid dizzier cliffs are seen | |
| Entangled thickets sparsely green, | |
| Methinks I trace, in outline drear, | |
| Old Fingal with his shadowy spear, | 20 |
| His gray locks streaming to the gale, | |
| And followed by his squadrons pale. | |
| Yes, slender aid from Fancy’s glass | |
| It needs, as round these shores we pass, | |
| Mid glen and thicket dark, to scan | 25 |
| The wild MacGregor’s savage clan | |
| Emerging, at their chieftain’s call, | |
| To foray or to festival; | |
| While nodding plumes and tartans bright | |
| Gleam wildly o’er each glancing height. | 30 |
| |
| But as the spectral vapors rolled | |
| Away in vestments dropped with gold, | |
| The healthier face of summer sky, | |
| With the shrill bagpipe’s melody, | |
| Recalls, o’er distant ocean’s foam, | 35 |
| The fondly treasured scenes of home; | |
| And thoughts, on angel-pinions driven, | |
| Drop in the heart the seeds of heaven, | |
| Those winged seeds whose fruit sublime | |
| Decays not with decaying time. | 40 |
| The loving child, the favorite theme | |
| Of morning hour or midnight dream; | |
| The tender friend so lowly laid | |
| Mid our own churchyard’s mournful shade; | |
| The smitten babe, who nevermore | 45 |
| Must sport around its father’s door,— | |
| Return they not, as phantoms glide, | |
| And silent seat them at our side? | |
| |
| Like Highland maiden, sweetly fair, | |
| The snood and rosebud in her hair, | 50 |
| Yon emerald isles, how calm they sleep | |
| On the pure bosom of the deep; | |
| How bright they throw, with waking eye, | |
| Their lone charms on the passer by; | |
| The willow, with its drooping stem, | 55 |
| The thistle’s hyacinthine gem, | |
| The feathery fern, the graceful deer, | |
| Quick starting as the strand we near, | |
| While, with closed wing and scream subdued, | |
| The osprays nurse their kingly brood. | 60 |
| |
| High words of praise, the pulse that stir, | |
| Burst from each joyous voyager; | |
| And Scotia’s streams and mountains hoar, | |
| The wildness of her sterile shore, | |
| Her broken caverns, that prolong | 65 |
| The echoes of her minstrel song, | |
| Methinks might catch the enthusiast-tone, | |
| That breathes amid these waters lone. | |
| Even I, from far Columbia’s shore, | |
| Whose lakes a mightier tribute pour, | 70 |
| And bind with everlasting chain | |
| The unshorn forest to the main,— | |
| Superior’s surge, like ocean proud, | |
| That leaps to lave the vexing cloud; | |
| Huron, that rolls with gathering frown | 75 |
| A world of waters darkly down; | |
| And Erie, shuddering on his throne | |
| At strong Niagara’s earthquake tone; | |
| And bold Ontario, charged to keep | |
| The barrier ’tween them and the deep, | 80 |
| Who oft in sounds of wrath and fear, | |
| And dark with cloud-wreathed diadem, | |
| Interpreteth to Ocean’s ear | |
| Their language, and his will to them,— | |
| I, reared amid that western vale, | 85 |
| Where Nature works on broader scale, | |
| Still with admiring thought and free, | |
| Loch Lomond, love to gaze on thee, | |
| Reluctant from thy beauties part, | |
| And bless thee with a stranger’s heart. | 90 |
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