The little village sleeps to-day,
Save but for children at their play.
The white clouds show their snowy breast
Above Glen-Aylmer's grassy crest.
And far away on Corsencon
A single shadow rests alone;
While Nith, shrunk into quietude,
Hath not one voice to make one brood.
All rests to-day; and as I lie,
With idle heart and idle eye,
I dream, and as I dream I hear
The brawling Dochart in my ear.
He sings; and all the silence fills
With outlines of the Highland Hills.
I smell the heather which they wind
About them, as in wish to bind
Upon their brows a purple wreath
To veil their craggy fronts beneath.
Ben Lawers looks upon Loch Tay
Hid half in mist, and far away
Ben More uprears his shoulder grim,
As if the whole belonged to him.
And farther on Schiehallion seeks
A misty mantle for his peaks.
These rise, but ever in my ear
The angry Dochart I can hear.
Thou river rushing on to seek
A barrier for thy wrath to wreak
Itself upon, wert thou the source
Of all that sullen fire and force
That leapt within the veins of those
Who held their own and slew their foes?
Perchance they took their stubborn pride
And thirst of rapine from thy tide!
Vain question! they have passed away
From Highland glen and Highland brae,
And take their sleep by thee, nor hear
Thy torrents thunder in their ear.
There, too, amid the hills they deem
That Fingal rests and dreams his dream,
The mists descend, and leave a trace
Of dews upon his resting-place.
They weep soft tears upon the stone
That seem but shed for him alone;
Meet place it is for Highland chief,
The wild winds lift their voice of grief,
And wail for him who rests beneath
Their coronachs of gloom and death.
For fancy sees the warrior grim
Still lying huge of arm and limb,
His broadsword resting by his side,
Whose keen edge shore the foeman's pride.
His white beard like a mantle holds
His heart within its snowy folds.
Vain fancy!—sheath and steel are rust,
And he himself is into dust.
No more the battle-slogans rend
The air, nor from th hills descend
The rushing clans with sudden cry,
The fire of conflict in their eye,
Before the thunder of whose way
The lightnings of the broadsword's play.
All, all have gone, and sunk and still
And peaceful as the windless hill,
Upon whose side they take their rest,
The heather waving o'er their breast.
Thou Highland girl that dwellest by
The Lochy, with its softer sigh,
Far from thy gentle life be still
The tempest of the cloudy hill;
The winds of heaven be in thy hair,
With fragrance of the heather there;
Thy dark, sweet eyes be still as bright,
With all their charms of liquid light.
Quick be thy foot, and light thy heart,
And thou thyself be still a part
Of all that calm and beauty seen
In wood and strath, in glen and green.
And in the night when slumber brings
Its dreams to thee of happy things
That, bending, touch with finger tips
The parted crimson of thy lips;
Still may there murmur through them all,
The gentle Lochy's rise and fall.
O, friend of mine, to whom I owe
What only I myself can know,
Those scenes grow very dear to me,
Because I looked on them with thee,
And thou—dost thou remember still
The sunshine warm on loch and hill;
The clouds that rose within our ken,
Like messengers from Ben to Ben;
The headlong waterfalls that broke
To die in drifts of spray and smoke;
The long still nights when darkness came,
With far-off murmurs through the same,
The lonely bird that, somewhere, smote
The silence with a single note;
The hush of streams whose monotone
Drew down the silence as its own?
Thou dost; and those long walks in which
The way grew light with quips of speech,
For Ossian's song in parody
Was heard; and many a travestie
Of sober rhyme was made to play
Its part to fit our holiday.
How those three summer days come back,
With all their sunshine in their track.
And Highland lake and hill and sky
Grow dear to all my dreaming eye,
But dearer each and all to me
Because I looked on them with thee.