The Lady of the Lake | Page 6

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 luxuriant ringlets hid,?Whose glossy black to shame might bring?The plumage of the raven's wing;?And seldom o'er a breast so fair?Mantled a plaid with modest care,?And never brooch the folds combined?Above a heart more good and kind.?Her kindness and her worth to spy,?You need but gaze on Ellen's eye;?Not Katrine in her mirror blue?Gives back the shaggy banks more true,?Than every free-born glance confessed?The guileless movements of her breast;?Whether joy danced in her dark eye,?Or woe or pity claimed a sigh,?Or filial love was glowing there,?Or meek devotion poured a prayer,?Or tale of injury called forth?The indignant spirit of the North.?One only passion unrevealed?With maiden pride the maid concealed,?Yet not less purely felt the flame;--?O, need I tell that passion's name?
XX.
Impatient of the silent horn,?Now on the gale