When from the sun was thy broad forehead hid?
How long is’t since the mighty Power bid
Thee heave to airy sleep from fathom dreams—
Sleep in the lap of thunder or sunbeams—
Or when grey clouds are thy cold coverlid!
Thou answer’st not; for thou art dead asleep.
Thy life is but two dead eternities,
The last in air, the former in the deep!
First with the whales, last with the eagle-skies
Drown’d wast thou till an earthquake made thee steep,
Another cannot wake thy giant-size!
Written in Burns’ Cottage
Now fills, O Burns, a space in thine own room,
Where thou didst dream alone on budded bays,
Happy and thoughtless of thy day of doom!
My pulse is warm with thine own Barley-bree,
My head is light with pledging a great soul,
My eyes are wandering, and I cannot see,
Fancy is dead and drunken at its goal;
Yet can I stamp my foot upon thy floor,
Yet can I ope thy window-sash to find
The meadow thou hast tramped o’er and o’er,—
Yet can I think of thee till thought is blind,—
Yet can I gulp a bumper to thy name,—
O smile among the shades, for this is fame!
Walking in Scotland
Where patriot battle has been fought, where glory had the gain;
There is a pleasure on the heath, where Druids old have been,
Where mantles grey have rustled by, and swept the nettled green;
There is a joy in every spot made known in times of old,
New to the feet although each tale a hundred times be told;
There is a deeper joy than all, more solemn in the heart,
More parching to the tongue than all, of more divine a smart,
When weary steps forget themselves upon a pleasant turf,
Upon hot sand, or flinty road, or sea-shore iron surf,
Toward the castle or the cot, where long ago was born
One who was great through mortal days, and died of fame unshorn.
Wood-lark may sing from sandy fern,—the Sun may hear his lay;
Runnels may kiss the grass on shelves and shallows clear,—
But their low voices are not heard, tho’ come on travels drear;
Blood-red the sun may set behind black mountain peaks,
Blue tides may sluice and drench their time in caves and weedy creeks,
Eagles may seem to sleep wing-wide upon the air,
Ring-doves may fly convulsed across to some high cedared lair,—
But the forgotten eye is still fast lidded to the ground,
As palmer’s that with weariness mid-desert shrine hath found.
Forgotten is the wordly heart,—alone it beats in vain!
Ay, if a madman could have leave to pass a healthful day,
To tell his forehead’s swoon and faint, when first began decay,
He might make tremble many a one, whose spirit had gone forth
To find a Bard’s low cradle-place about the silent north!
Scanty the hour, and few the steps, beyond the bourn of care!
Beyond the sweet and bitter world,—beyond it unaware!
Scanty the hour, and few the steps,—because a longer stay
Would bar return and make a man forget his mortal way!
O horrible! to lose the sight of well-remember’d face,
Of Brother’s eyes, of Sister’s brow,—constant to every place,
Filling the air as on we move with portraiture intense,
More warm than those heroic tints that pain a painter’s sense,
When shapes of old come striding by, and visages of old,
Locks shining black, hair scanty grey, and passions manifold!
Man feels the gentle anchor pull, and gladdens in its strength:
One hour, half idiot, he stands by mossy waterfall,
But in the very next he reads his soul’s memorial;
He reads it on the mountain’s height, where chance he may sit down,
Upon rough marble diadem, that hill’s eternal crown.
Yet be his anchor e’er so fast, room is there for a prayer,
That man may never lose his mind in mountains black and bare;
That he may stray, league after league, some great birth- place place to find,
And keep his vision clear from speck, his inward sight unblind.
Staffa
Ever such a work began;
Not the wizard of the Dee
Ever such a dream could see;
Not St John, in Patmos’ Isle,
In the passion of his toil,
When he saw the churches seven,
Golden-aisled, built up in heaven,
Gazed at such a rugged wonder,
As I stood its roofing under.
Lo! I saw one sleeping there,
On the marble cold and bare;
While the surges wash’d his feet,
And his garments white did beat
Drench’d
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