Part 17
High stands that lonely mountain ground Above each babbling human sound; Yet from its place afar it sees Night scared by angry furnaces; The lighting up of city proud, The brightness o'er it in the cloud. The foolish people never seek Wise counsel from that silent peak, Though from its height it looks abroad All-seeing as the eye of God, Haunting the peasant on the down, The workman in the busy town; Though from the closely-curtain'd dawn The day is by the mountain drawn-- Whether the slant lines of the rain Fill high the brook and shake the pane; Or noonday reapers, wearied, halt On sheaves beneath a blinding vault, Unshaded by a vapour's fold-- Though from that mountain summit old The cloudy thunder breaks and rolls, Through deep reverberating souls; Though from it comes the angry light, Whose forky shiver scars the sight, And rends the shrine from floor to dome, And leaves the gods without a home.
And ever in that under-world, Round which the weary clouds are furl'd, The cry of one that buys and sells, The laughter of the bridal bells Clear-breaking from cathedral towers; The pedlar whistling o'er the moors; The sun-burnt reapers, merry corps, With stocks behind and grain before; The huntsman cheering on his hounds, Build up one sound of many sounds. As instruments of diverse tone, The organ's temple-shaking groan, Proud trumpet, cymbal's piercing cry, Build one consummate harmony: As smoke that drowns the city's spires, Is fed by twice a million fires; As midnight draws her complex grief From sob and wail of bough and leaf: And on those favourable days When earth is free from mist and haze, And heaven is silent as an ear Down-leaning, loving words to hear, Stray echoes of the world are blown Around those pinnacles of stone-- The saddest sound beneath the sun, Earth's thousand voices blent in one.
And purely gleams the crystal well Amid the silence terrible; On heaven its eye is ever wide, At morning and at eventide; And as a lover in the sight And favour of his maiden bright, Bends till his face he proudly spies In the clear depths of upturn'd eyes-- The mighty heaven above it bow'd, Looks down and sees its crumbling cloud; Its round of summer blue immense, Drawn in a yard's circumference, And lingers o'er the image there, Than its once self more purely fair.
Whence come the waters, garner'd up So purely in that rocky cup? They come from regions high and far, Where blows the wind, and shines the star. The silent dews that Heaven distils At midnight on the lonely hills; The shower that plain and mountain dims, On which the dazzling rainbow swims: The torrents from the thunder gloom, Let loose as by the crack of doom, The whirling waterspout that cracks Into a scourge of cataracts, Are swallow'd by the thirsty ground, And day and night without a sound, Through banks of marl, and belts of ores, They filter through a million pores, Losing each foul and turbid stain: So fed by many a trickling vein, The well, through silent days and years, Fills softly, like an eye with tears.
AUTUMN.
Happy tourist, freed from London, The planets' murmur in the _Times_! Seated here with task work undone, I must list the city chimes A fortnight longer. As I gaze On Pentland's back, where noon-day piles his Mists and vapours: old St Giles's Coronet in sultry haze: A hoary ridge of ancient town Smoke-wreathed, picturesque, and still; Cirque of crag and templed hill, And Arthur's lion couching down In watch, as if the news of Flodden Stirr'd him yet--my fancy flies To level wastes and moors untrodden Purpling 'neath the low-hung skies. I see the burden'd orchards, mute and mellow: I see the sheaves; while, girt by reaper trains, And blurr'd by breaths of horses, through a yellow September moonlight, roll the swaggering wanes.
While in this delicious weather The apple ripens row on row, I see the footsteps of the heather Purpling ledges: to and fro In the wind the restless swallows Turn and twitter; on the crag The ash, with all her scarlet berries, Dances o'er a burn that hurries Foamily from jag to jag: Now it babbles over shallows Where great scales of sunlight flicker; Narrow'd 'gainst the bank it quicker Runs in many a rippled ridge; Anon in purple pools and hollows It slumbers: and beyond the bridge, On which a troop of savage children clamber, A sudden ray comes out And scuds a startled trout O'er golden stones, through chasms brilliant amber. To-day one half remembers With a sigh, In the yellow-moon'd Septembers Long gone by, Many a solitary stroll With an ever-flowing soul When the moonbeam, falling white On the wheat fields, was delight; When the whisper of the river Was a thing to list for ever; When the call of lonely bird Deeper than all music stirr'd; When the restless spirit shook O'er some prophesying book, In whose pages dwelt the hum Of a life that was to come; When I, in a young man's fashion, Long'd for some excess of passion-- Melancholy, glory, pleasure, Heap'd up to a lover's measure; For some unknown experience To unlock this mortal fence, And let the coop'd-up spirit range A world of wonder, sweet and strange: And thought, O joy all joys above! Experience would be faced like Love. When I dream'd that youth would be Blossom'd like an apple-tree, The fancy in extremest age Would dwell within the spirit sage. Like the wall-flower on the ruin, With its smile at Time's undoing, Like the wall-flower on the ruin, The brighter from the wreck it grew in. Ah, how dearly one remembers Memory-embalm'd Septembers! But I start, as well I may, I have wasted half a day. The west is red above the sun, And my task work unbegun.
Nature will not hold a truce With a beauty without use: Spring, though blithe and ebonair, Ripens plum and ripens pear.
O mellow, mellow orchard bough! O yellow, yellow wheaten plain! Soon will reaper wipe his brow, Gleaner glean her latest grain, October, like a gipsy bold, Pick the berries in the lane, And November, woodman old, With fagots gather'd 'gainst the cold, Trudge through wind and rain.
WARDIE--SPRING-TIME.
In the exuberance of hope and life, When one is play'd on like an instrument By passion, and plain faces are divine; When one holds tenure in the evening star, We love the pensiveness of autumn air, The songless fields, brown stubbles, hectic woods: For as a prince may in his splendour sigh, Because the splendours are his common wear, Youth pines within the sameness of delight: And the all-trying spirit, uncontent With aught that can be fully known, beguiles Itself with melancholy images, Sits down at gloomy banquets, broods o'er graves, Tries unknown sorrow's edge as curiously (And not without a strange prophetic thrill) As one might try a sword's, and makes itself The Epicurus of fantastic griefs.
But when the blood chills and the years go by, As we resemble autumn more, the more We love the resurrection time of spring. And spring is now around me. Snowdrops came; Crocuses gleam'd along the garden walk Like footlights on the stage. But these are gone. And now before my door the poplar burns, A torch enkindled at an emerald fire. The flowering currant is a rosy cloud; One daffodil is hooded, one full blown: The sunny mavis from the tree top sings; Within the flying sunlights twinkling troops Of chaffinches jerk here and there; beneath The shrubbery the blackbird runs, then flits, With chattering cry: demure at ploughman's heel, Within the red-drawn furrow, stalks the rook, A pale metallic glister on his back; And, like a singing arrow upwards shot Far out of sight, the lark is in the blue.
This morning, when the stormy front of March, Is mask'd with June, and has as sweet a breath, And sparrows fly with straws, and in the elms Rooks flap and caw, then stream off to the fields, And thence returning, flap and caw again, I gaze in idle pleasantness of mood, Far down upon the harbour and the sea-- The smoking steamer half-way 'cross the Firth Shrank to a beetle's size, the dark-brown sails Of scatter'd fishing-boats, and still beyond, Seen dimly through a veil of tender haze, The coast of Fife endorsed with ancient towns,-- As quaint and strange to-day as when the queen, In whose smile lay the headsman's glittering axe, Beheld them from her tower of Holyrood, And sigh'd for fruitful France, and turning, cower'd From the lank shadow, Darnley, at her side.
Behind, the wondrous city stretches dim With castle, spire, and column, from the line Of wavy Pentland, to the pillar'd range That keeps in memory the men who fell In the great war that closed at Waterloo. Whitely the pillars gleam against the hill, While the light flashes by. The wondrous town, That keeps not summer, when the summer comes, Without her gates, but takes it to her heart! The mighty shadow of the castle falls! At noon athwart deep gardens, roses blow And fade in hearing of the chariot-wheel. High-lifted capital that look'st abroad, With the great lion couchant at thy side, O'er fertile plains emboss'd with woods and towns; O'er silent Leith's smoke-huddled spires and masts; O'er unlink'd Forth, slow wandering with her isles To ocean's azure, spreading faint and wide, O'er which the morning comes--if but thy spires Were dipp'd in deeper sunshine, tenderer shade, Through bluer heavens rolled a brighter sun, The traveller would call thee peer of Rome, Or Florence, white-tower'd, on the mountain side.
Burns trod thy pavements with his ploughman's stoop And genius-flaming eyes. Scott dwelt in thee, The homeliest-featured of the demigods; Apollo, with a deep Northumbrian burr, And Jeffrey with his sharp-cut critic face, And Lockhart with his antique Roman taste, And Wilson, reckless of his splendid gifts, As hill-side of its streams in thunder rain; And Chalmers, with those heavy slumberous lids, Veiling a prophet's eyes; and Miller, too, Primeval granite amongst smooth-rubb'd men; Of all the noble race but one remains, Aytoun--with silver bugle at his side, That echo'd through the gorges of romance-- Pity that 'tis so seldom at his lip!
This place is fair; but when the year hath grown From snow-drops to the dusk auricula, And spaces throng'd to-day with naked boughs, Are banks of murmuring foliage, chestnut-flower'd, Far fairer. Then, as in the summer past, From the red village underneath the hill, When the long daylight closes, in the hush Comes the pathetic mirth of children's games: Or clear sweet trebles, as two lines of girls Advance and then retire, singing the while Snatches of some old ballad sore decay'd, And crumbling to no-meaning through sheer age-- A childish drama watch'd by labouring men, In shirt-sleeves, smoking at the open doors, With a strange sweetness stirring at their hearts. Then when the darkness comes and voices cease, The long-ranged brick-kilns glow, the far-stretch'd pier Breaks out, like Aaron's rod, in buds of fire; And with a startling suddenness the light, That like a glow-worm slumbers on Inchkeith, Broadens, then to a glow-worm shrinks again. The sea is dark, but on the darker coast Beyond, the ancient towns Queen Mary knew Glitter, like swarms of fire-flies, here and there. Come, Summer, from the south, and grow apace From flower to flower, until thy prime is reach'd, Then linger, linger, linger o'er the rose!
DANSCIACH.
Upon a ruin by the desert shore, I sat one autumn day of utter peace, Watching a lustrous stream of vapour pour O'er Blaavin, fleece on fleece.
The blue frith stretch'd in front without a sail, Huge boulders on the shore lay wreck'd and strown; Behind arose, storm-bleach'd and lichen-pale, Buttress and wall of stone.
And sitting on the Norseman's ruin'd stair, While through the shining vapours downward roll'd, A ledge of Blaavin gleam'd out, wet and bare, I heard this story told:--
"All night the witch sang, and the castle grew Up from the rock, with tower and turret crown'd: All night she sang--when fell the morning dew 'Twas finish'd round and round.
"From out the morning ambers opening wide, A galley, many-oar'd and dragon-beak'd, Came, bearing bridegroom Sigurd, happy-eyed, Bride Hilda, brilliant-cheek'd.
"And in the witch's castle, magic-built, They dwelt in bridal sweetness many a year, Till tumult rose in Norway, blood was spilt,-- Then Sigurd grasp'd his spear.
"The Islesmen murmur'd 'gainst the Norseman's tax; Jarl Sigurd led them--many a skull he cleft, Ere, 'neath his fallen standard, battle-axe Blood-painted to the heft,
"He lay at sunset propp'd up by his slain, (Leader and kerne that he had smitten down,) Stark, rigid; in his haut face scorn and pain, Fix'd in eternal frown.
"When they brought home the bloody man, the sight Blanch'd Hilda to her hair of bounteous gold; That day she was a happy bride, that night A woman gray and old.
"The dead man left his eyes beneath the brows Of Hilda, in a child whose speech Prattled of sword, spear, buckler, idle rows Of galleys on the beach.
"And Hilda sang him songs of northern lands, Weird songs of foamy wraith and roaming sail, Songs of gaunt wolves, clear icebergs, magic brands, Enchanted shirts of mail.
"The years built up a giant broad and grave, With florid locks, and eyes that look'd men through; A passion for the long lift of the wave From roaming sires he drew.
"Amongst the craggy islands did he rove, And, like an eagle, took and rent his prey; Oft, deep with battle-spoil, his galleys clove Homeward their joyous way.
"He towering, full-arm'd, in the van, with spear Outstretch'd, and hair blown backward like a flame: While to the setting sun his oarsmen rear The glory of his name.
"Once, when the sea his battle galleys cross'd, His mother, sickening, turn'd from summer light, And faced death as the Norse land, clench'd with frost, Faces the polar night.
"At length his masts came raking through the mist: He pour'd upon the beach his wild-eyed bands: The fierce, fond, dying woman turn'd and kiss'd His orphan-making hands,
"And lean'd her head against his mighty breast In pure content, well knowing so to live One single hour was all that death could wrest Away, or life could give;
"And murmur'd as her dying fingers took Farewell of cheek and brow, then fondly drown'd Themselves in tawny hair--'I cannot brook To sleep here under ground.
"My women through my chambers weep and wail: I would not waste one tear-drop though I could: When they brought home that lordly length of mail With bold blood stain'd and glued,
"I wept out all my tears. Amongst my kind I cannot sleep; so upon Marsco's head, Right in the pathway of the Norway wind, See thou and make my bed!
"The north wind blowing on that lonely place Will comfort me. Kiss me, my Torquil! I Feel the big hot tears plashing on my face. How easy 'tis to die!'
"The farewell-taking arms around him set Clung closer; and a feeble mouth was raised, Seeking for his in darkness--ere they met The eyeballs fix'd and glazed.
"Dearer that kiss, by pain and death forestall'd, Than ever yet touch'd lip! Beside the bed The Norseman knelt till sunset, then he call'd The dressers of the dead,
"Who, looking on her face, were daunted more Than when she, living, flash'd indignant fires; For in the gathering gloom the features wore A look that was her sire's.
"And upward to a sea-o'erstaring peak With lamentation was the Princess borne, And, looking northward, left with evening meek, And fiery-shooting morn."
In this wise ran the story full of breaks: And brooding o'er that subtle sense of death That sighs through all our happy days, that shakes All raptures of our breath,
Methought I saw the ancient woman bow'd By sorrow in her witch-built home--and still The radiant billows of autumnal cloud Flow'd on the monstrous hill.
EDENBAIN.
Young Edenbain canter'd Across to Kilmuir, The road was rough, But his horse was sure. The mighty sun taking His splendid sea-bath, Made golden the greenness Of valley and strath.
He cared not for sunset, For gold rock nor isle: O'er his dark face their flitted A secretive smile. His cousin, the great London merchant was dead, Edenbain was his heir-- "I'll buy lands," he said.
"Men fear death. How should I! We live and we learn-- I' faith, death has done me The handsomest turn. Young, good-looking, thirty-- (Hie on, Roger, hie!) I'll taste every pleasure That money can buy.
"Duntulm and Dunsciach May laugh at my birth. Let them laugh! Father Adam Was made out of earth. What are worm-eaten castles And ancestry old, 'Gainst a modern purse stuff'd With omnipotent gold?"
He saw himself riding To kirk and to fair, Hats lifting, arms nudging, "That's Edenbain there!" He thought of each girl He had known in his life, Nor could fix on which sweetness To pluck for a wife.
Home Edenbain canter'd, With pride in his heart, When sudden he pull'd up His horse with a start. The road, which was bare As the desert before, Was cover'd with people A hundred and more.
'Twas a black creeping funeral; And Edenbain drew His horse to the side of The roadway. He knew In the cart rolling past That a coffin was laid--- But whose? the harsh outline Was hid by a plaid.
The cart pass'd. The mourners Came marching behind: In front his own father, Greyheaded, stone-blind; And far-removed cousins, His own stock and race, Came after in silence, A cloud on each face.
Together walk'd Mugstot And fiery-soul'd Ord, Whom six days before He had left at his board. Behind came the red-bearded Sons of Tormore With whom he was drunk Scarce a fortnight before.
"Who is dead? Don't they know me?" Thought young Edenbain, With a weird terror gathering In heart and in brain. In a moment the black Crawling funeral was gone, And he sat on his horse On the roadway alone.
"'Tis the second sight," cried he; "'Tis strange that I miss Myself 'mong the mourners! Whose burial is this? "My God! 'tis my own!" And the blood left his heart, As he thought of the dead man That lay in the cart.
The sun, ere he sank in His splendid sea-bath, Saw Edenbain spur through The golden-green strath. Past a twilighted shepherd At watch rush'd a horse, With Edenbain dragged At the stirrup a corse.
PEEBLES.
I lay in my bedroom at Peebles With my window curtains drawn, While there stole over hill of pasture and pine The unresplendent dawn.
And through the deep silence I listen'd, With a pleased, half-waking heed, To the sound which ran through the ancient town-- The shallow-brawling Tweed.
For to me 'twas a realisation Of dream; and I felt like one Who first sees the Alps, or the Pyramids, World-old, in the setting sun;
First, crossing the purple Campagna, Beholds the wonderful dome Which a thought of Michael Angelo hung In the golden air of Rome.
And all through the summer morning I felt it a joy indeed To whisper again and again to myself, This is the voice of the Tweed.
Of Dryburgh, Melrose, and Neidpath, Norham Castle brown and bare, The merry sun shining on merry Carlisle, And the Bush aboon Traquair,
I had dream'd: but most of the river, That, glittering mile on mile, Flow'd through my imagination, As through Egypt flows the Nile.
Was it absolute truth, or a dreaming That the wakeful day disowns, That I heard something more in the stream, as it ran, Than water breaking on stones?
Now the hoofs of a flying mosstrooper, Now a bloodhound's bay, half caught, The sudden blast of a hunting horn, The burr of Walter Scott?
Who knows? But of this I am certain, That but for the ballads and wails That make passionate dead things, stocks and stones, Make piteous woods and dales,
The Tweed were as poor as the Amazon, That, for all the years it has roll'd, Can tell but how fair was the morning red, How sweet the evening gold.
JUBILATION OF SERGEANT M'TURK ON WITNESSING THE HIGHLAND GAMES.
INVERNESS, 1864.
Hurrah for the Highland glory! Hurrah for the Highland fame! For the battles of the great Montrose, And the pass of the gallant Graeme! Hurrah for the knights and nobles That rose up in their place, And perill'd fame and fortune For Charlie's bonny face!
Awa frae green Lochaber He led his slender clans: The rising skirl o' our bagpipes fley'd Sir John at Prestonpans. Ance mair we gather'd glory In Falkirk's battle stoure, Ere the tartans lay red-soak'd in bluid On black Drumossie Moor.
An' when the weary time was owre, When the head fell frae the neck, Wolfe heard the cry, "They run, they run!" On the heights aboon Quebec. At Ticonderoga's fortress We fell on sword and targe: Hurt Moore was lifted up to see "His Forty-second" charge.
An' aye the pipe was loudest, An' aye the tartans flew, The first frae bluidy Maida To bluidier Waterloo. We have sail'd owre many a sea, my lads, We have fought 'neath many a sky, And it's where the fight has hottest raged That the tartans thickest lie.
We landed, lads, in India, When in our bosom's core One bitter memory burn'd like hell-- The shambles at Cawnpore. Weel ye mind our march through the furnace-heats, Weel ye mind the heaps of slain, As we follow'd through his score of fights Brave "Havelock the Dane."
Hurrah for the Highland glory! Hurrah for the Highland names! God bless you, noble gentlemen! God love you, bonny dames! And sneer not at the brawny limbs, And the strength of our Highland men-- When the bayonets next are levell'd, They may all be needed then.
These verses I had no sooner copied out in my best hand than, looking up, I found that the rain had ceased from sheer fatigue, and that great white vapours were rising up from the damp valleys. Here was release at last--the beleaguering army had raised the siege; and, better than all, pleasant as the sound of Blucher's cannon on the evening of Waterloo, I heard the sound of wheels on the boggy ground: and just when the stanched rain-clouds were burning into a sullen red at sunset, I had the Brians, father and son, in my bothy, and pleasant human intercourse. They came to carry me off with them.
[Sidenote: Blaavin.]
I am to stay with Mr M'Ian to-night. A wedding has taken place up among the hills, and the whole party have been asked to make a night of it. The mighty kitchen has been cleared for the occasion; torches are stuck up, ready to be lighted; and I already hear the first mutterings of the bagpipes' storm of sound. The old gentleman wears a look of brightness and hilarity, and vows that he will lead off the first reel with the bride. Everything is prepared; and even now the bridal party are coming down the steep hill-road. I must go out to meet them. To-morrow I return to my bothy to watch; for the weather has become fine now, the sunny mists congregating on the crests of Blaavin--Blaavin on which the level heaven seems to lean.
END OF VOLUME I.