Grouped their dark hues with every stain,

The weather-beaten crags retain,

With boughs that quaked at every breath,

Grey 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 shatter'd 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 stray'd,
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 burnish'd 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 centinel 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 grey.

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 matin's distant hum,

18

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 green-wood spent,
Were but to-morrow's merriment;

But hosts may in these wilds abound,

Such as are better missed than found;