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, seem'd 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 roll'd;
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 on the lake in masses threw

Crags, knolls, and mounds, confusedly hurl'd, The fragments of an earlier world;

A wildering forest feather'd o'er

His ruin'd sides and summit hoar,

12

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,

The boat had touch'd this silver strand,
Just as the Hunter left his stand,
And stood conceal'd 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 up-raised, and look intent, eye and ear attentive bent,

And

And locks flung back, and lips apart,
Like monument of Grecian art,

In listening mood, she seem'd 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 train'd her pace,-
A foot more light, a step more true,

Ne'er from the heath-flower dash'd the dew;
E'en the slight hare-bell 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 list'ner held his breath to hear.

XIX.

A Chieftain's daughter seem'd the maid;
Her sattin snood, her silken plaid,

Her golden brooch, such birth betray'd.

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;