The Lady of the Lake | Page 6

hazel mingled there;
The primrose pale and violet flower
Found in
each cliff a narrow bower;
Foxglove and nightshade, side by side,

Emblems of punishment and pride,
Grouped their dark hues with
every stain

The weather-beaten crags retain.
With boughs that
quaked at every breath,
Gray birch and aspen wept beneath;
Aloft,
the ash and warrior oak
Cast anchor in the rifted rock;
And, higher
yet, the pine-tree hung
His shattered trunk, and frequent flung,

Where seemed the cliffs to meet on high,
His boughs athwart the

narrowed sky.
Highest of all, where white peaks glanced,
Where
glistening streamers waved and danced,
The wanderer's eye could
barely view
The summer heaven's delicious blue;
So wondrous wild,
the whole might seem
The scenery of a fairy dream.
XIII.
Onward, amid the copse 'gan peep
A narrow inlet, still and deep,

Affording scarce such breadth of brim
As served the wild duck's
brood to swim.
Lost for a space, through thickets veering,
But
broader when again appearing,
Tall rocks and tufted knolls their face

Could on the dark-blue mirror trace;
And farther as the Hunter
strayed,
Still broader sweep its channels made.
The shaggy mounds
no longer stood,
Emerging from entangled wood,
But,
wave-encircled, seemed to float,
Like castle girdled with its moat;

Yet broader floods extending still
Divide them from their parent hill,

Till each, retiring, claims to be
An islet in an inland sea.
XIV.
And now, to issue from the glen,
No pathway meets the wanderer's
ken,
Unless he climb with footing nice
A far-projecting precipice.

The broom's tough roots his ladder made,
The hazel saplings lent
their aid;
And thus an airy point he won,
Where, gleaming with the
setting sun,
One burnished sheet of living gold,
Loch Katrine lay
beneath him rolled,
In all her length far winding lay,
With
promontory, creek, and bay,
And islands that, empurpled bright,

Floated amid the livelier light,
And mountains that like giants stand

To sentinel enchanted land.
High on the south, huge Benvenue

Down to the lake in masses threw

Crags, knolls, and mounds,
confusedly hurled,
The fragments of an earlier world;
A wildering
forest feathered o'er
His ruined sides and summit hoar,
While on the
north, through middle air,
Ben-an heaved high his forehead bare.

XV.
From the steep promontory gazed
The stranger, raptured and amazed,

And, 'What a scene were here,' he cried,
'For princely pomp or
churchman's pride!
On this bold brow, a lordly tower;
In that soft
vale, a lady's bower;
On yonder meadow far away,
The turrets of a
cloister gray;
How blithely might the bugle-horn
Chide on the lake
the lingering morn!
How sweet at eve the lover's lute
Chime when
the groves were still and mute!
And when the midnight moon should
lave
Her forehead in the silver wave,
How solemn on the ear would
come
The holy matins' distant hum,
While the deep peal's
commanding tone
Should wake, in yonder islet lone,
A sainted
hermit from his cell,
To drop a bead with every knell!
And bugle,
lute, and bell, and all,
Should each bewildered stranger call
To
friendly feast and lighted hall.
XVI.
'Blithe were it then to wander here!
But now--beshrew yon nimble
deer--
Like that same hermit's, thin and spare,
The copse must give
my evening fare;
Some mossy bank my couch must be,
Some
rustling oak my canopy.
Yet pass we that; the war and chase
Give
little choice of resting-place;--
A summer night in greenwood spent

Were but to-morrow's merriment:
But hosts may in these wilds
abound,
Such as are better missed than found;
To meet with
Highland plunderers here
Were worse than loss of steed or deer.--
I
am alone;--my bugle-strain
May call some straggler of the train;
Or,
fall the worst that may betide,

Ere now this falchion has been tried.'
XVII.
But scarce again his horn he wound,
When lo! forth starting at the
sound,
From underneath an aged oak
That slanted from the islet
rock,
A damsel guider of its way,
A little skiff shot to the bay,


That round the promontory steep
Led its deep line in graceful sweep,

Eddying, in almost viewless wave,
The weeping willow twig to
rave,
And kiss, with whispering sound and slow,
The beach of
pebbles bright as snow.
The boat had touched this silver strand
Just
as the Hunter left his stand,
And stood concealed amid the brake,

To view this Lady of the Lake.
The maiden paused, as if again
She
thought to catch the distant strain.
With head upraised, and look
intent,
And eye and ear attentive bent,
And locks flung back, and
lips apart,
Like monument of Grecian art,
In listening mood, she
seemed to stand,
The guardian Naiad of the strand.
XVIII.
And ne'er did Grecian chisel trace
A Nymph, a Naiad, or a Grace,

Of finer form or lovelier face!
What though the sun, with ardent
frown,
Had slightly tinged her cheek with brown,--
The sportive toil,
which, short and light
Had dyed her glowing hue so bright,
Served
too in hastier swell to show
Short glimpses of a breast of snow:

What though no rule of courtly grace
To measured mood had trained
her pace,--
A foot more light, a step more true,
Ne'er from the
heath-flower dashed the dew;
E'en the slight harebell raised its head,

Elastic from her airy tread:
What though upon her speech there
hung
The accents of the mountain tongue,---
Those silver sounds,
so soft, so dear,
The listener held his breath to hear!
XIX.
A chieftain's daughter seemed the maid;
Her satin snood, her silken
plaid,
Her golden brooch, such birth betrayed.
And seldom was a
snood amid
Such wild