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| O WONDERFUL mountain of Blaavin, | |
| How oft since our parting hour | |
| You have roared with the wintry torrents, | |
| You have gloomed through the thunder-shower! | |
| But by this time the lichens are creeping | 5 |
| Gray-green o’er your rocks and your stones, | |
| And each hot afternoon is steeping | |
| Your bulk in its sultriest bronze. | |
| O, sweet is the spring wind, Blaavin, | |
| When it loosens your torrents’ flow, | 10 |
| When with one little touch of a sunny hand | |
| It unclasps your cloak of snow. | |
| O, sweet is the spring wind, Blaavin, | |
| And sweet it was to me! | |
| For before the bell of the snowdrop | 15 |
| Or the pink of the apple-tree, | |
| Long before your first spring torrent | |
| Came down with a flash and a whirl, | |
| In the breast of its happy mother | |
| There nestled my little girl. | 20 |
| O Blaavin, rocky Blaavin, | |
| It was with the strangest start | |
| That I felt, at the little querulous cry, | |
| The new pulse awake in my heart; | |
| A pulse that will live and beat, Blaavin, | 25 |
| Till, standing round my bed, | |
| While the chirrup of birds is heard out in the dawn, | |
| The watchers whisper, He ’s dead! | |
| O, another heart is mine, Blaavin, | |
| Sin’ this time seven year, | 30 |
| For life is brighter by a charm, | |
| Death darker by a fear. | |
| O Blaavin, rocky Blaavin, | |
| How I long to be with you again, | |
| To see lashed gulf and gully | 35 |
| Smoke white in the windy rain,— | |
| To see in the scarlet sunrise | |
| The mist-wreaths perish with heat, | |
| The wet rock slide with a trickling gleam | |
| Right down to the cataract’s feet; | 40 |
| While towards the crimson islands, | |
| Where the sea-birds flutter and skirl, | |
| A cormorant flaps o’er a sleek ocean floor | |
| Of tremulous mother-of-pearl. | |
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| Ah me! as wearily I tread | 45 |
| The winding hill-road mute and slow, | |
| Each rock and rill are to my heart | |
| So conscious of the long-ago. | |
| My passion with its fulness ached, | |
| I filled this region with my love, | 50 |
| Ye listened to me, barrier crags, | |
| Thou heard’st me singing, blue above. | |
| O, never can I know again | |
| The sweetness of that happy dream, | |
| But thou remember’st, iron crag, | 55 |
| And thou remember’st, falling stream! | |
| O, look not so on me, ye rocks. | |
| The past is past, and let it be; | |
| Thy music, ever-falling stream, | |
| Brings more of pain than joy to me. | 60 |
| O cloud, high dozing on the peak, | |
| O tarn, that gleams so far below, | |
| O distant ocean, blue and sleek, | |
| On which the white sails come and go, | |
| Ye look the same; thou sound’st the same, | 65 |
| Thou ever-falling, falling stream,— | |
| Ye are the changeless dial-face | |
| And I the passing beam. | |
| As adown the long glen I hurried, | |
| With the torrent from fall to fall, | 70 |
| The invisible spirit of Blaavin | |
| Seemed ever on me to call. | |
| As I passed the red lake fringed with rushes | |
| A duck burst away from its breast, | |
| And before the bright circles and wrinkles | 75 |
| Had subsided again into rest, | |
| At a clear open turn of the roadway | |
| My passion went up in a cry, | |
| For the wonderful mountain of Blaavin | |
| Was bearing his huge bulk on high, | 80 |
| Each precipice keen and purple | |
| Against the yellow sky. | |
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