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(From Records)
FOR one whole week I breathed Orcadian air,— | |
| So far up in the north that, all the time, | |
| I felt among cloud-islands of the skies. | |
| And Autumn lay asleep among the isles; | |
| The fiords all had stilled their roaring throats, | 5 |
| Afraid to wake her, and, into themselves, | |
| Murmured a drowsy bass; the grim-browed cliffs | |
| Bent forward, half relaxed their savage looks | |
| At seeing them reflected in the pools.— | |
| As oft I stood upon a tiptoe hill, | 10 |
| The lesser islands sailed out in the bays, | |
| And promontories drifted into isles. | |
| It was enchanted land—some other world— | |
| That hung within the void; and rounding all, | |
| Beneath it as above, was calm blue sky. | 15 |
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| High over all, the weather-beaten head | |
| Of Hoy rises. On his scarréd brow | |
| He wears a precious stone,—a carbuncle,— | |
| Enough, ’t is thought, to buy Orcadia. | |
| From certain points its fiery beams are seen; | 20 |
| And many an islander has marked the spot, | |
| Then clomb the footless heights to snatch the prize, | |
| And be forever rich. In vain his search! | |
| The bright delusion’s never to be found. | |
| But when he has retraced the perilous steep, | 25 |
| The thing he sought is in its place again, | |
| And laughs at him. So are we ever fooled | |
| On earth by things that glitter. Wealth and fame | |
| When reached are never found. But, failing oft, | |
| We learn at last our truest wealth is love,— | 30 |
Best fame, approving conscience.
Up the cliffs | |
| Of Hoy, there ’s another precious stone, | |
| Suggesting richer wealth than diamond, | |
| Ruby, or pearl,—yea, all the ruck of gems. | |
| The breezy front of that high beetled rock | 35 |
| Presents, as if medallioned on the sky, | |
| By Nature chiselled, the exact profile | |
| Of Walter Scott. There has the wizard brow | |
| Hung brooding o’er the isles from time unknown, | |
| And seen enacted all the stirring lore | 40 |
| Of pirates, smugglers, jarls, and old sea-kings. | |
| O storied Prince! from that high stand, on this, | |
| Its northern bound, look southward and behold | |
| Thy legendary empire. * * * * * In Orcadia we find the rocks | |
| That Miller read,—the very rocks that gave | 45 |
| To him their “testimony,” in a type | |
| Already ancient when our Adam came, | |
| To which his Eden ’s but a minute since, | |
| The fabled flood the rain that fell e’en now: | |
| Those marvellous stone scriptures that reveal | 50 |
| What monsters trod the earth and swam the seas, | |
| Or crawled in slime of half-created earth, | |
| Age after age, ere yet the eye of man | |
| Was there to watch; and how the aged woods, | |
| Year after year, put on their roofs of green, | 55 |
| And waited eras with their oaken aisles, | |
| Without one Druid soul to dedicate | |
| Their silences to prayer: whose only sounds | |
| Were of the winds and rains, the beasts that made | |
| Fierce loves and fiercer wars, heaven’s fiery bolts | 60 |
| That rent the groaning oaks, the old-world screams | |
| Of birds to us unknown; but surely not | |
| The linkéd music of our modern woods; | |
| For in my heart I read that merle and thrush, | |
| Yea, all the voices of our woodland quires | 65 |
| Were given to Eve in paradise, long, long | |
| After the writing of those books of stone. | |
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| Inland the explorer turns,—if inland be, | |
| Where all is island, even the islands cleft | |
| With reaches of the sea,—and he beholds | 70 |
| Stennis, the mystic Stonehenge of the north, | |
| Upon a tongue of springy sward that parts | |
| Two bleak, half-salted lochs. A stranger, he | |
| Knows not what sight awaits him, passing down | |
| The easy sloping road, when starts in view | 75 |
| A curve of visionary things, that shine | |
| Like ghosts amid the sunlight, white or gray, | |
| As pass the sailing shadows of the clouds. | |
| With wondering gaze and speculative thought, | |
| He nears and nears them, while by slow removes | 80 |
| They ’ve ranked themselves into a giant ring | |
| Of hoary stones, and, in the centre, one | |
| Of huger bulk than any of the rest. | |
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| Speak! ye dumb priests of eld, and say what kind | |
| Of men they were that set you thus on end, | 85 |
| And to what purpose? Not a single word! | |
| The yellowhammer sits on your bald crowns, | |
| And mocks my queries with its moorland pipe: | |
| Methinks a whisper runs from each to each, | |
| But ’t is the wind upon your flinty sides, | 90 |
| And not your inward voices. Ye have slept | |
| The dream of many ages, and your own | |
| Is hardened into stone. It will not yield | |
| To us the reflex of its inner self, | |
| Long crossed Time’s dusky gulf, though living still | 95 |
| In some far circle of eternal light. | |
| Yet underneath the springy sward, and through | |
| The solid hearts of these old stones, I feel | |
| The beating thought that raised them; and within | |
| This almost mythic temple I am bowed | 100 |
| With worship deeper than mere stones evoke. | |
| A haunted place,—the ancient forms of men, | |
| And their devotion gone, all long, long gone! | |
| But these gray stones that heard their songs and prayers, | |
| Ring with their spirits yet; this grass has lived | 105 |
| Perennially since then,—the same they trod: | |
| Yon sun, so old and young, looked down on them, | |
| And saw their rites: he looks the same on me. | |
| O Druid! we are one; I feel thy thoughts | |
| Now climbing up to God. The form of thought | 110 |
| Goes with the age,—the thought is for all time. | |
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