LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. # 
 
 ^ 
 
 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. J I 
 
Highland Rambles: 
 
 ^e 
 
 A POEM. 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM B. WRIGHT. 
 
 /o BOSTON: 
 
 ADAMS & COMPANY. 
 
 25 Bromfield Street. 
 1868. 
 
 Ho , h 
 
7^3 3 4^ 
 
 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1868, by 
 
 Adams and Company, 
 
 In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the District of Massachnsetts. 
 
 STEREOTYPED JBY 
 W. F. BROWN AND CO., BOSTON. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Dedication 5 
 
 Part 1 9 
 
 Part II 30 
 
 Part III 58 
 
 Part IV. 92 
 
 Part V 124 
 
 Part VI 157 
 
 Part VII 175 
 
DEDICATION. 
 
 From its Castaly above 
 
 Welled a fount of heavenly Love. 
 
 Thereof a mortal drank, therein 
 
 He cleansed his spirit of its sin. 
 
 His eyes caught stronger beams, and tears 
 
 Were born to him of deep delight, 
 
 A lofty music filled his ears. 
 
 And there was offered to his sight 
 
 The face of a majestic Soul, 
 
 That was not wave nor wind nor light, 
 
 But moved and murmured through the whole. 
 
 Love is the daintiest thief that ever 
 Slipped hither out of Paradise. 
 Nought is so dark but he can sever, 
 By the fine flashes of his eyes. 
 The meaning nestling in its heart. 
 No lore for him too wise or deep, 
 He can explore with fiery art. 
 He steals from the coy rose asleep 
 The dreams she would to none impart, 
 And ere the river can hasten by, 
 He will its darting god espy. 
 
vi DEDICATION. 
 
 And without Love may none unlock 
 The secret temple-gates of God. 
 Though mazes mingle, phantoms mock, 
 Love has no fear, he finds a road. 
 Smites prison'd fountains from the rock, 
 And wears a full-orbed faith that, beaming 
 On every form of truth or seeming. 
 Finds nothing with so hard a face, 
 But that it keeps some look of grace. 
 Therefore to Love I dedicate 
 The labors which my hands create. 
 
Highland Rambles. 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 Loitering purples droop and dream, 
 
 Languid hazes glimmer, 
 Tortured by the sultry beam, 
 
 Breezes swoon and meadows simmer. 
 
 Tarry longer and receive 
 
 Summer's drowsy potion, 
 Mope and muse from morn to eve 
 
 Without passion, without motion. 
 
 Forth, and snap the cunning fetter ; 
 
 Couched in Alpine bower, 
 Thou shalt have thy senses better 
 
 Where cool-fronted mountains tower. 
 
 Hearts of men, 't is said, beat surer 
 
 In their lordly bosoms. 
 Simpler faiths spring, love flows purer. 
 
 Life comes out in fresher blossoms. 
 
lo HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 Seeking long in school and temple, 
 
 Yet no Master's eye 
 Lights thee to the high ensample 
 
 Faithful hearts must find or die. 
 
 Nature hides in fragrant places 
 
 Darlings of her own, 
 Crowns them with her secret graces, 
 
 Unprofaned by mart or town. 
 
 Eyries where the storms are fledged. 
 Tracts with granite shod, 
 
 Nurse a race to nature pledged, 
 Homely souls that live with God. 
 
 Vagrant feet oft soonest win 
 
 Shining goals of fate ; 
 Spindle, doomed thy thread to spin. 
 
 Doth thine eager hands await. 
 
 The first lark shook the dampness from his wings 
 And throbbed his matins to the flushing morn. 
 Mildest and latest of a gracious May, 
 As three strayed spirits, Arthur, Vivian, Paul, 
 Brushed off the humming swarms of early dreams, 
 And sprang from beds of pine-boughs underneath 
 Thick-branching pines. And Paul, who sought the 
 East, 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES. n 
 
 Cried, " Look, the crescent strands her silver keel 
 Upon the pearly breakers of the dawn." 
 And Vivian, " Let us climb to yonder peak, 
 Ere the first rosy ripple break." But he. 
 Whose wit blew cool as winds from mountain lakes, 
 Arthur, " Go up. I follow when my brows 
 Three times are dipped in water." And the three, 
 Frighting some drowsy pinions yet untrimmed 
 To the first fancies of the scrupulous beak. 
 Burst through the mesh of thickets that all night 
 Had rustled dewy curtains round their slumber, 
 And rent the leafy woof that sought to screen 
 The glittering pulses of a spring, and dipped 
 Into the eddies, and made fresh and cool 
 Their faces. " Let us touch the gnarry crown," 
 Said Paul, " while yet its topmost ridges smoke, 
 Fresh-tipt by the dank sandal of the night, 
 And through quaint oriels of the parting mist 
 Catch swiftly changing pictures of the land." 
 
 They glided over bosomed meads, where now 
 The merle and robin helped the lark to thrill 
 The brightening cope with pulses of sweet sound, 
 Shook from the tre-foil half its load of dews. 
 And won with shout and leap the shaggy spurs 
 Of the height, and wrestling with the steepness 
 
 gained 
 The summit, as the first keen lance of the sun ^ 
 
 Splintered upon its crest and turned in rout 
 The trembling vapors. Baiting here their breath, 
 Stretched at the great paw of a lion-crag. 
 
12 HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 Silent, and offering to slow-moving airs 
 
 Their steaming foreheads, far in front they saw 
 
 A surge of misty peaks that rolled in fire, 
 
 Touched by the crimson currents from the east, 
 
 And marked the morning from a simple maid. 
 
 Who strays alone through blushing gardens, change 
 
 Into a stately queen who comes with all 
 
 Her peers, herself imperial over all. 
 
 Below, the ample champaign wore the smiles 
 
 Of two auroras ; one above in heaven. 
 
 And one the shining season half-way orbed. 
 
 Fresh tints upon a thousand meadows gleamed. 
 
 Where with her rod the month struck node and spray. 
 
 Unsealing founts of bloom. Majestic floods 
 
 Of verdure swept across the wrinkled plains 
 
 In polished waves, with drifts of purple foam, 
 
 Or rippled up to kiss with vivid lips 
 
 The hard feet of the mountains. East and west 
 
 The multitudinous knoll upleaped and laughed. 
 
 Crowned with white orchard - garlands, thick with 
 
 flower. 
 Whose boughs sustained with slumberous ease their 
 
 freights. 
 Like milky swans that dream in placid waves. 
 Their plumes stirred oft by dalliance of the wind. 
 The herded granges sparkled brown or white, 
 As barn and dwelling chanced. A happy land ! 
 Laden with splendors of the perfect May, 
 Heralding with initial pomp the march 
 Of the great queen to come with larger gifts, 
 A mellower ether and more pregnant suns. 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 13 
 
 But now the valleys murmured of the day. 
 
 In struggle from the rosy bands of sleep 
 
 The hamlets stirred, and silver shafts of smoke 
 
 Mounted to heaven from the ivied homes 
 
 Sown in the quiet furrows of the land j 
 
 Long heired of pastoral Peace, whose haunts were 
 
 thick 
 For slumber and the piping of his loves. 
 The lusty cackle from the granges blended 
 With lowings and with bleatings faint, and all 
 The subtle rhetoric of happy sounds 
 The valleys love to fondle in their breasts. 
 Idyls, sweet-luted from innumerous groves, 
 Filled the wide air with unexpressive notes 
 Fresh from the lips of nature in her prime. 
 Unto the broadening splendor of the skies 
 Surrendered wholly, all were mute till Paul 
 With softest accents sang a little song. 
 Pattering the crags with tender drops of rhythm. 
 That seemed a space to smooth their savage frown. 
 
 The hand of morn is Dian-cool, 
 
 Her maiden brows serenely bright ; 
 
 But from her eyes mayst quaff thee full 
 Of rich, ambrosial light. 
 
 The fretful heart lies glad and still. 
 
 Charmed through and through with utter bliss ; 
 The lordly mind forgets his will, 
 
 So pure her beauty is. 
 
14 HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 Who looks upon her is made wise ; 
 
 More than his mystic Vedas tell, 
 With holy awe the Brahmin's eyes 
 
 Read in her miracle. 
 
 Wouldst sing the gift her eye-beams bring, 
 Sweet be thy melodies and strong ; 
 
 The gift her eye-lids keep, wouldst sing, — 
 That were Apollo's song. 
 
 But their sweet moods were broken, as he closed, 
 By the slow advent of a foot that pressed 
 A ledge that neighbored. Straightway all arose. 
 Startled to sudden reverence by one, 
 Noble in mien, though bowed beneath his years. 
 Leaning upon a gnarled staff he seemed 
 Some fragment of an antique world, a sage 
 Fit to have fostered kingliest hearts, and shown 
 Beauty and truth to a heroic age ; 
 Sublime Prahlada wandering sole at dawn, 
 Or Saturn crowning an Italian hill 
 In the golden prime. From ample brows serene 
 White locks flowed back in streams, and snow- 
 fringed eyes. 
 Wherein a hundred dewy Aprils slept. 
 Shone earnestly, the beacons of a soul 
 Accustomed to adore. The signs august 
 Of eldest wisdom furrowed either cheek. 
 And a perpetual heaven of kindliness 
 Dwelt on his features. While abashed they gazed. 
 He smiled, and said : 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 " My sons, I welcome you. 
 'T is mine to welcome, for meseems I read 
 A softer clime upon your cheeks, not masked 
 With our rude bronze, and in your eyes I find 
 Perplexed mirrors of unwonted scenes. 
 But days remote from man, a charm, perchance, 
 That never quite forsakes the prospect hence, 
 Have taught my feet these paths for many years, 
 Morning or evening. The kind chance that wedj 
 Our hours of travel, giving to my ears 
 Your Memnon utterance, doubtless purposes 
 Closer acquaintance. And I think the Morn, 
 So young and fair, has sown the self-same forms 
 Of beauty and of thought in either breast. 
 To make us, each to know the other, ripe." 
 " I thank the chance," said Paul, " whate'er it be, 
 Gracious, it seems, that crosses here our paths 
 Upon the glowing headlands of the dawn." 
 And Vivian cried, " Three half-blown pedants we, 
 New-fledged from Academic nests, not yet 
 Full masters of the wing. Some vacant months 
 We slip the Sisyphean weight of books. 
 And sweep our thoughts of all scholastic dust 
 And esoteric breathings of the schools ; 
 Bathing our souls in highland valleys, shade 
 And sunlight, treading with monastic feet 
 The sylvan aisles and loud oracular seats 
 Of nature. We are fugitive, in part. 
 From the tumultuous stress of city cares, 
 And shun the sudden fangs of lurking plagues." 
 Then Arthur with a seeming-careless palm 
 
 15 
 
1 6 HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 Caught up the distaff of discourse, and said, 
 " We steer not for the Golden Fleece, nor some 
 Atlantis sunk from sight of men, but fling 
 Free sheets to any vagrant breeze that asks, 
 Or drift on random tides from isle to isle. 
 I hold it much too wanton. Better far 
 Some practiced pilot sat astern to shape 
 The voyage, lest we wholly fail of port. 
 But, Sir, it seems a marvel that you bear 
 So lightly this great burthen of your years." 
 
 And the Sire said, " Not mounting from the fields 
 Have I attained this eminence. For that 
 Scarce now abides enough of youthful force. 
 The sinews slacken and the limbs that fought 
 Gladly aforetime with laborious tasks 
 Are withered. This sere age hangs from its branch 
 A sapless stem, which the next wind will snap. 
 See you the wrinkle on the shaggy cheek 
 Of yonder mountain ? There a cataract. 
 Sweet-voiced, forever tames the sullen crags 
 To its blithe moods, and birds of liveliest throat 
 Pour all day long unfailing founts of glee 
 From grove and thicket. There a meek cot peeps 
 Beneath the mossy eaves of sheltering cliffs. 
 Through pleasant arbors native to the spot. 
 There have I dwelt these many years and touched 
 A world above the jarring world of men." 
 
 " If you will pardon curious eyes that pry," 
 Said Vivian, " from untempered youth, in part, 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 17 
 
 And somewhat from a rule we have, to probe 
 
 Adventure to the quick, we would be taught 
 
 The reason of your solitude that wears 
 
 A front so strange. For we have learned the lore 
 
 Of action duteous unto social ends, 
 
 Drawing its argument from social needs." 
 
 And the grey man put forth a hand that blessed 
 The moving world below him, as he said, 
 " Majestic are the feet of him who marches 
 With patience in the ordered ranks of men ; 
 Leagued to his kind by bands of faith and love, 
 Sharing with them the burthen and the wrong. 
 Yet striking with them unto aims of worth. 
 But souls are born to whom the blaring mart 
 Of the world affords no custom ; souls that hear 
 Monitions which they know. To such it seems 
 Better in frozen silence to refrain, 
 Better the dormant impulse, lifeless palm. 
 Than to be married to unsteadfast things. 
 For me, my heart is in the village there. 
 Milk-white ; the cradle where my youth was rocked, 
 First sipped the honeyed dews of life and read 
 Fondly the glorious features of the hills. 
 There bloom some branches of my stock, a son 
 And a rare flower, his daughter. And the breath, 
 The fragrant breath of filial tenderness, 
 Mounts to my tranquil shades. Often they come, 
 Laden with choicest courtesies and gifts, 
 And one day I will go to them to die. 
 While the conducting years led up my feet 
 
1 8 HIGHLAND RAMBLES, 
 
 From gardens of quick-budding youth to slopes 
 
 Of manhood, some deep-hearted ponderings 
 
 Grew in me, visions of a dawn to break 
 
 Within me with a splendor of its own. 
 
 The future pressed upon me with strange thoughts 
 
 That wrought like fire. Long stung by stirring hints, 
 
 Shot down from stars or whispered by the earth, 
 
 Or inly prompted by the restless mind, 
 
 I caught swift glimpses of a fleeting god 
 
 Half-seen, and touching with elusive step 
 
 That bursting prime ; a near mysterious sense 
 
 Of somewhat nobler than the phantom world 
 
 Of eye and ear, a good not to be compassed. 
 
 And when young Phosphor muffled his pale ray 
 
 Behind a skirt of saffron cloud, or when 
 
 The Great Bear loitered o'er the northern crests, 
 
 I soothed the feverous heart with wanderings 
 
 Through these inviolate solitudes. Therefrom 
 
 Blossomed a dearness which ensuing years 
 
 Have ripened into passion. And my hearth. 
 
 When death had stolen away its ornament, 
 
 Making the wife's chair vacant, pierced me so 
 
 With memories that haunted every nook, 
 
 I passed the staff of office to my son. 
 
 The labor and the mastery, and sought 
 
 My cottage in the crevice of the hills. 
 
 But ere the fierce day packs our soles with lead, 
 
 Will ye not fare with me an hour and taste 
 
 Some matin cheer beneath my boughs, and hear 
 
 The brook make merry ? " 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 19 
 
 Gladly they set forth, 
 Spell-drawn by wonder and the mystic sanction 
 Of his seraphic eyes whose lightnings mild 
 Held all of heaven molten, and by hearts 
 Prophetic of some blessing linked to him. 
 In slow descent by gently sloping paths. 
 Threading the passes, climbing here and there, 
 They moved, and spied a winding gorge that roared 
 Unto a brooiv, in wildest lion-sport 
 Tossing his angry foam from rock to rock ; 
 Mad as a colt that, bursting his low bound 
 Flings high his swelling mane, and in pursuit 
 Of greener pastures weaves with supple grace 
 The motions of his beauty. By its side 
 The glossy verdure flowed in noiseless stream, 
 Broke to a thousand gentle rivulets, 
 Trickled down dev/y clefts and peeped in cool 
 And fountained coverts sprinkled through the crags. 
 They paused to view the sinuous vales below ; 
 Trim fields with buttercup and crowfoot pied, 
 Dark belts of wood with pale green streaks between, 
 Bright flecks of light dappling the distant slopes, 
 And where through a far throat a village spire 
 Flashed, and beyond a sheen of sunny waves. 
 Entering the gorge they met a lawn inurned, 
 Walled round with sudden steeps that dripped with 
 
 moss. 
 To this sweet refuge stolen from tedious flights, 
 The cradled zephyrs rocked themselves asleep, 
 Or sporting baby-breezes dipped on wings. 
 That only faintly shook the slumberous air. 
 
20 HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 From bush to bush, low-prattling. On the right 
 A monstrous willow drooped in solemn state, 
 Bathing her golden hair in lucid pools 
 Piled up with foam. And half-way steeped in shade, 
 Here couched a ruddy heifer drowsily, 
 Perfect in delicate curve of neck and horn, 
 Covering her chestnut globes of mellow light 
 Momently with dusk lids, the while her throat 
 Throbbed through its sleekiness with change of cuds. 
 And mixing shades chequered her polished flanks. 
 They crossed to where the cot slyly retired 
 Through double-folded depths of foliage, 
 Withdrawn within the cool frown of the cliff. 
 And here a score of downy throats were oped 
 With silver welcome ; ditties of all notes 
 From robin clear to tiny-piping wren. 
 On rustic benches shagged with bark of pine. 
 They sat and cooled their eyes against the green 
 And peaceful leafiness of mingled boughs. 
 
 Then Vivian whose young soul yet fought with mists. 
 
 And ever seeking, sought not aimlessly 
 
 Nor with sure knowledge, spake with earnest tones 
 
 Half passionate, as if his heart were sad : 
 
 " O softer than Arcadian lawns or beds 
 
 Of richest clover where the summer's cheek 
 
 Roses in slumber, unto weary eyes 
 
 And hearts that sicken in the blatant crowd, 
 
 These flinty peaks would feel ! Here through calm 
 
 days 
 To ponder on existence and fulfil 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 21 
 
 The measure of full manhood, to achieve 
 Vision, most blessed gift of God, and peace, 
 This it were well to do. Hushed hours of rapt 
 Perception, keenly sundering the clouds 
 That darken, tranquil pulses that maintain 
 The intellect in equal poise to weigh 
 What Silence with a million hands would bring, 
 And the most self-less heart of love that feels 
 Tenderest confessions of the flower and star, 
 All these would flock with golden tribute round, 
 And help the building hands of man to base 
 On rock, whose roots strike to the centre, firm, 
 His life, which battering siege of worldliness. 
 And all the leaguing doubts that shake the mind, 
 Might waste their pith against." 
 
 Then Arthur ; he 
 Who better loved to dash his daring heart 
 Against the front of hardiest enmities. 
 To dally with the bristling crests of the Deep, 
 Or boldly touch the stops of enterprise. 
 Than court the sweets of moods contemplative 
 By vigils and by solemn musings lone : 
 " Medicinal, no doubt, it seems to men 
 Agued with fear, perplext by shallow tongues, 
 The scrannel chorus of a wildered time, 
 To take cool-witted Silence by the hand 
 And learn of her. This is not wholly loss, 
 Foregoing not for aye the benison 
 Of civic toil and knitting of like spirits. 
 But men have grown love-mad with loneliness, 
 Browsed on the brakes and fondly yielded up 
 
2 2 HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 Their root-fed souls to starry promptings, coy 
 
 Of mortal amity and swift to plunge 
 
 Like otters into darkness. Is the soul 
 
 Incapable of height unless exiled 
 
 From fellowship, centred in blasted tracts ? 
 
 O why so dainty ? Is it better thus 
 
 To slip the burden than to toss it high 
 
 With hope renewed ? Tame not the foot ordained 
 
 To sport with cliff and barrier, thorn and shard, 
 
 To velvet pacings in ambrosial groves. 
 
 Who lives to dream, propped upon flowery peaks, 
 
 Nursed down by fondling phantasms of the mind 
 
 From virile sinews to the thewless pulp 
 
 Of infants, or to point with languid scorn 
 
 At the low haunts and seething marts of men ? 
 
 Life is not life that is not daringly 
 
 Plucked from the open jaws of angry fate. 
 
 Sequestered from the onset and the shock 
 
 Of rude antagonisms, all dedicate 
 
 To buoyant leisure and to sylvan thoughts 
 
 Who may not wear a placid countenance. 
 
 Have temperate pulses ? Honor rather him 
 
 Who keeps his soul serene when all the state 
 
 Rocks to the civic tempest ; mindful yet 
 
 Of hope and duty. And I most revere 
 
 The man who to the final verge of all 
 
 Drags slowly weary steps, sprinkled with stains 
 
 Of travel, scarred with many wounds, sure signs 
 
 Of long enduring toil. For me, my arms 
 
 May wither to the trunk but they shall strive 
 
 To leaven and to knead the dough of the time." 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 23 
 
 And Paul flung out a loud, ironic laugh : 
 
 " Certes, young Alexander — Tamerlane, 
 
 I see the peoples flock to kiss your rod, 
 
 The viziers and the hoary senates kneel. 
 
 Bestride your world and ride it round the sun. 
 
 But if you stoop before my stoic tub 
 
 To bar my sunlight with your purple, mark, 
 
 I blind your royal eyes with musty straw." 
 
 " Not Alexander, then Diogenes," 
 
 Said Arthur, laughing. And the Father smiled 
 
 To see the sparks leap from their crossing blades, 
 
 And looking upon Arthur, said, " My son, 
 
 I blame you not. I love the fearless eye, 
 
 The bounding pulse, the heart that like a steed 
 
 Springs unto action. These if wisely trained 
 
 And taught the equal yoke of steadfast law, 
 
 May strain the world ahead a notch or two. 
 
 But wisdom first must quell their lawless ramp. 
 
 Must tame their scorn and gird their might with 
 
 meekness. 
 Till Love, the elfin maid, may curb their foam 
 With reins of gossamer. So shall they strive 
 Co-operant with what is just and good. 
 Not marring." 
 
 Vivian then ; his cheek flushed through 
 With transient shame, " Arthur, not all may boast 
 Sinews that never quail, but lightly poised, 
 Dance over dizziest voids. Lo, you would toss 
 The babe unweaned and ignorant of his force 
 To grapple with the tiger-surge of the Deep. 
 I wander as a child whose young eye, snared 
 
24 HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 By twinkling lustres in the forest, tempts 
 
 His feet to quit his father's door. All day 
 
 He hies, not finding his desire, and sinks 
 
 Forlorn, a prisoner of unpitying night. 
 
 Trembling at the fierce cries of wolves and pards." 
 
 Anon the cottage door upon its hinge 
 Revolving, showed to all the form of one, 
 The Oread of the spot, a beauteous maid. 
 Seeming a strain divine of womanhood 
 Full-sung to its sweetest j in her virgin bloom 
 Appareled as a cloud that wears a scarf 
 Of iris ; either eyelid burdened low ; 
 The fine stress of a heart too exquisite. 
 Bearing a snow-white pitcher in her hand, 
 A perfect hand and just imbrowned a shade 
 Caught from the glow of household offices. 
 With startled glances at the throng, she paused 
 While thrice a mounting dove would close her wings, 
 Then like a sunbeam through the leafage slipped. 
 
 Paul looked like Eros when he erst beheld 
 
 The brows of Psyche. And the Father said, 
 
 " This grandchild is my dearest visitant. 
 
 Save when the torrents are too perilous. 
 
 Or thawing snows of March go thundering down, 
 
 No day of all the year but her glad feet 
 
 Climb hither, and her ordering hands control 
 
 My scant economy ; or at my side 
 
 She turns a chosen page that hits her mood, 
 
 Reading, whene'er her heart is touched, aloud, 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 25 
 
 To have my smiles or tears. Her soul has fed 
 
 From earliest maidenhood upon my words, 
 
 Able to frame most cunning reasonings, 
 
 Nor lacking in the fine poetic sense. 
 
 I find my chiefest solace in her love 
 
 And the delightful tale of poesy 
 
 Which is her being. For within her dwells 
 
 Clear candor without shade or guile ; a heart 
 
 Most sensitive to thoughts of piety ; 
 
 Calm hopes that lift her to cerulean homes. 
 
 Her spirit sits within her like a star ; 
 
 Through all its golden changes it preserves 
 
 A law of beauty firm as that which wheels 
 
 Wroth Mars or guides the pole of Venus' car, 
 
 The gentle law of perfect womanhood, 
 
 A soul in love with what is fairest, best. 
 
 Ah me, my old lips will not quite forget, 
 
 Speaking of her, their trick of eulogy. 
 
 So like is she to mine own buried saint." 
 
 All heard him reverently, but Paul drank in 
 His words as thirsty flowers the rain, then said, 
 " Our maidens yonder wear the magic ring 
 Of Melusina, choosing to be elves, 
 Impalaced in an atomy, to whom 
 Each dew-drop is an orb in heaven afar, 
 Rather than bear the woman's stature, shield 
 And spear of ripe Minerva, or than lift 
 Proudly their foreheads up among the gods. 
 Scarce would they arch their soft Ledsean necks 
 To welcome Jove, though widowed of his bolts, 
 
26 HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 His brows unwrinkled of the thunder-seams, 
 
 Unless he staled his godhood to their kind. 
 
 And should he summon them to higher themes 
 
 Than passion, dalliance, or their own sweet charms, 
 
 The purr and purl of sleek wits exquisite. 
 
 Yea, though he outlined how his worlds were framed, 
 
 Or bared his old Olympic polities. 
 
 They 'd straight unrufifle all their eager down 
 
 And fan their languid lids to sudden sleep. 
 
 Fine fairy graces, mimic migniard lores. 
 
 Frail arts, like the papilio's purple dust 
 
 Brushed from her Psyche-wings at the first touch, 
 
 The courtly nothings of luxurious dames, 
 
 Lesson too idly her whose stalk should bear 
 
 The leaf and blossom of a better time, 
 
 Who should nurse kings and bards and mould the 
 
 hearts 
 Of warriors. For the woman should move up 
 The meek and starlike rival of the man, 
 Colleague in soul through all his climbings-up. 
 She has her sceptre, equal and not less. 
 Albeit her lilied realm is far more fair." 
 
 Then Arthur, with a comic eye askance, 
 " Ah recreant, perfidious, without shame, 
 Unknightly ! Nevermore shall Queen of Love 
 Crown thee her champion in the sounding lists. 
 Nor shalt thou tryst to save a maiden's fame. 
 What if I published this fine railing there 
 Where oft thy lips composed obeisant vows, 
 And made their homage smell like Indian gums ? 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 27 
 
 Take heed, lest I proclaim thee what thou art, 
 And stir the white-armed Maenads to thy doom." 
 
 Smiling, the gracious Hermit led them forth, 
 
 AVhere dancing on the edges of a shelf. 
 
 The brook reeled, toppled, fell on beds of flint 
 
 With showers of shrieks, half laughter and half pain, 
 
 And fled among the bosks like one ashamed. 
 
 Here on a smooth-faced rock was neatly spread 
 
 A cloth that glistened like a patch of snow. 
 
 Or some white pennon from the battlements 
 
 Of morning ; and thereon were duly ranged 
 
 Four liberal bowls of savory milk, and store 
 
 Of simple viands, berries of last year. 
 
 And, suited to the season, garden-fruits. 
 
 " Sit," said the Host, " and feast like true sultans 
 
 Of nature, charmed by all her symphonies. 
 
 By choirs of timbrels, tabors, lutes and flutes." 
 
 And Edith waited on them while they ate. 
 
 Long lashes under dark Circassian brows 
 
 Curtained the lustrous deeps of lovely eyes. 
 
 Blue and as mild as heaven. Her forehead shone 
 
 Pensively broad, Madonna-calm and clear. 
 
 And on her lips from time to time was seen 
 
 Sweet laughter, luring every soul to love. 
 
 Freshened, they strayed, with steps that often paused, 
 Through thronging arbors, plots of fragrant plants, 
 Hues wont to pave more lowly wolds, but here 
 Most winning from their strangeness. Everywhere 
 Were visible the motions of a hand 
 
28 mGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 By inner beauty taught and purest love, 
 
 That lent new graces. All things seen, they sought 
 
 The shady seats, and sitting, talked at ease. 
 
 In them the genial power of intercourse 
 
 Glowed like a vintage, and they were as friends 
 
 Once dear, though sundered long, who now would 
 
 close 
 With swift and fiery welcome soul to soul. 
 And when the discourse lulled, the Eldest said, 
 " You have come hither, as it seems, in part 
 To loose yourselves from Academic stays. 
 Unsheathe your spirits from the leaden scales 
 Of urban manners ; partly, as you said. 
 To shun the sudden fangs of lurking plagues. 
 Herein behold some likeness to that famed 
 Italian exod to Campanian hills 
 From Florence, plague-struck. Why not model now 
 Your pastime to the fashion of that prank, 
 And framing ambush dwellings, tarry here 
 While three moons come and fill their disks and 
 
 cease ? 
 For when the fourth is born I will go down 
 Among my kindred in the vale to die. 
 Here day will follow cheerful day, each lulled 
 By some sweet flow of poesy or tale 
 Choice-culled from garden-spaces of the past, 
 Fit to beguile the hours of languor, mixt. 
 As best will suit, with words of wiser weight. 
 And dipping to the hamlets, we will touch 
 Our brethren through the daily life and mark 
 The man among his burdens." 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 Then they all 
 Burst forth in loud acclaim, " Lo this is good. 
 Three moons will we abide, and at the fourth 
 Go down into the semblance of the world, 
 And thread the misty alleys of our lives." 
 
 29 
 
3© HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 II. 
 
 Wakes the youth from early bliss 
 To find the planet sphered amiss : 
 Perplext through all his purple teens, 
 Plagues his soul with what it means. 
 
 Questions asked of every man, 
 Questions no man answer can, 
 Suck the red light from his cheek, 
 Has no choice but still to seek. 
 Which is phantom, which is fact, 
 Which the man's, the Maker's act ? 
 Lo, behind the rose the thistle. 
 Just below the god the beast ; 
 Which is better, bowl or missal. 
 Cap of fool or alb of priest ? 
 Lo, the rivers change to rocks. 
 World-old mountains flow to seas, 
 Bacchus prays and Phoebus mocks, 
 Graces startle, Furies please. 
 
 And he hears a baleful sound. 
 Voice of anguish from the ground, 
 Hears the serpent-hiss of sin 
 Just without him, just within, 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 31 
 
 A dread hurtle and a roar, 
 Chaos tumbling on her shore ; 
 Voices raised the storm to still, 
 Babelized against their will : 
 Will be saved, can scarcely tell 
 If from heaven or from helL 
 
 Dawns a morning cool and blue. 
 
 Will go forth, undo and do, 
 
 Spy the primal cycles through, 
 
 Boldly break the eternal seals. 
 
 Read the secrets fate conceals ; 
 
 Pluck wisdom from the single Soul, 
 
 Far-centred ordinance of the whole. 
 
 To right the dark earth's prostrate pole. 
 
 Falls anon the evening shade. 
 
 He drags his soul back sore dismayed, 
 
 Brings no boon, has won no token, 
 
 Heard no mystic whisper spoken ; 
 
 Fledged with large imaginings, 
 
 On cliffs of fate has bruised his wings j 
 
 From chasing knowledge round the moon, 
 
 Comes home to cobble his own shoon. 
 
 What hour the white cap of the topmost peak 
 Flamed like a cresset through Norwegian fogs. 
 The early Patriarch and his reverent brood 
 Set forth, the younger hung with wallets puffed 
 
32 HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 With loaves and dainties for the matin lunch, 
 
 And wound with laugh and shout along the rims 
 
 Precipitous, and beetling brows that towered 
 
 Under the fiery fringes of the dawn, 
 
 Westward, and swooped into a vale that slept 
 
 In silent circle down betwixt the heights, 
 
 Yet high above her sisters of the plain. 
 
 Her the great Hills came up to worship, flocked 
 
 And from their haughty eminences stooped 
 
 To kiss her beauty with too shaggy lips ; 
 
 Loosed from their hearts a thousand glittering rills 
 
 To bear their messages of love, and placed 
 
 The white pearl of a lake upon her breast. 
 
 Northward, a monstrous cleft went down and framed, 
 
 With ragged borders dark against the morn, 
 
 Vast breadths of the world, majestic perspective, 
 
 Under an ample canopy of sky. 
 
 The vale here suffered transformation rude. 
 
 A throat of horror, never to be closed, 
 
 Opened sheer jaws of thunderous abyss, 
 
 Piled with the splinters of a shattered sphere ; 
 
 Low-diving ledges, shooting spires of cliff, 
 
 Gigantic shards and tumbled bowlders, mixt ; 
 
 Dread signals of the earth's old agonies. 
 
 " Nature can cherish wildest fantasies," 
 Said Paul, " but in her moods of gambol hies 
 To regions of untrodden loneliness. 
 Such lawless grouping of strange opposites 
 Confounds the eye with an unguessed delight, 
 Nor palls, as never wholly reconciled." 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 33 
 
 " Only the fearless foot," the Master said, 
 " May track her to her fortresses and spy 
 Her weird imaginations. She would put 
 Her suitors to their duty, shock their faith 
 With rash surprises, proving if they love. 
 For him who with a child-like suppliance 
 Follows her still, she holds in store a good, 
 A passion that will bless him. Oft she sheds 
 Light made intenser by a weight of gloom j 
 As you have marked upon the western verge 
 The level sun pour from a cloudy chink 
 His unmasked majesty and bathe in light 
 The world and lower air, while overhead 
 The leaden vault without a seam of ether 
 Frowns like a fiend oppressive, doubling so 
 The beauty he would cancel." 
 
 Arthur then, 
 " I fancy Thor aforetime came this way, 
 And overwearied with his walk and wroth. 
 Flung yonder down his mace in careless spleen, 
 The while he soothed his limbs there in the vale." 
 " You angle for conceits ? " said Paul. " Here 's one. 
 These sun-bleached fragments are the fleshless 
 
 bones 
 Of Titans sunk beneath the volleyed crags, 
 Cottus or Steropes or Atlas huge." 
 " One more," said Vivian. " The winsome vale 
 Shadows the white proportions of a nymph. 
 Exquisite down from brow to slender waist. 
 Thence metamorphosed like a Nereid maid 
 That trails her dark sea-coil from sea to shore." 
 
34 
 
 HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 " Ha, ha ! " cried Arthur. " Sorely pushed, I trow. 
 
 Come, follow me who dares. For Hades I. 
 
 I hear Styx rumble, and I swear to speak 
 
 With Proserpine." And while they stared aghast, 
 
 He dangled from a bough and touched a shelf, 
 
 And clinging like a lichen now^ anon 
 
 Bold as a chamois at his play, shot down, 
 
 Soon lost to sight. And all were mute until 
 
 A shout as from the heart of Erebus, 
 
 Defiant, crag-resounding, bellowed up, 
 
 A respite to their fears. " The grisly hosts 
 
 Split their hoarse throats to welcome him," said Paul. 
 
 " Good, let him suck the hot malarial steam 
 
 Of Acheron alone. The slope rocks there 
 
 Offer light egress when he wills to mount. 
 
 For me, I better love Elysian lawns, 
 
 Carpets of amaranth and asphodel. 
 
 Come, we have Nestor with us, let us find 
 
 Some spot embowered where we may recline 
 
 And drink the prospect yonder." 
 
 While they urged 
 Close scrutiny, their blown yEneas rose 
 Brow-burning from Inferno, and they sat 
 Hard by a cavern's throat whose darkness shook 
 To the engulph^d murmur of a stream, 
 Snoring within his dusky mountain lair. 
 And the less fearless twain made light of him 
 Who rashly struck with bold spear unreversed 
 The shield of Peril, toying with his life. 
 They goaded him with barbs of dextrous wit, 
 Pelted his brows with showers of dainty spleen, 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 But he nor moved nor smiled, but prone on earth 
 Listened as though he heard them not, then said : 
 
 " I saw pale Helen wander lonely-eyed, 
 Unsceptred of her beauty ; saw the stare 
 Of cold Medusa when she sat apart ; 
 I saw Ixion wrestle with his wheel. 
 And Tityus smite the vulture ; and I danced 
 In lampless halls with young Eurydice, 
 Chatted with Ceres' daughter and took lunch 
 With Pluto. Would you hear the song he sang ? '■ 
 And lifting up a treble voice he sang. 
 
 Let Jove rub bright his milky-way, 
 And brother Neptune scour his floor, 
 
 I '11 hold my wassail night and day. 
 And hear my sea of sinners roar. 
 
 I choose before celestial ruffles 
 My easy suit of Stygian grey. 
 
 You 're just from the Academy } 
 
 I love your snowy saintships there ; 
 
 Though they blaspheme me shamefully, 
 I 've filled each professorial chair, 
 
 And when they rally for devotion, 
 
 They sometimes let me make a prayer. 
 
 But mostly ye are fools and shrimps 
 
 To put the devil under ban. 
 As theologue he slightly limps, 
 
 I grant, but he 's a gentleman ; 
 
 35 
 
36 HIGHLAND RAMBLES, 
 
 His vaults are packed with earth's best vintage ; 
 Proserpina, fill up the can. 
 
 He was a sprightly German thrush 
 Who sang my tail off, stole my gear, 
 
 And left me breeches, frills and plush. 
 I love the Teutons at their beer. 
 
 But when they 're transcendentalistic, — 
 God bless me, but I 'd rather hear 
 
 Jove's stamp of wrath that shocks the pole, 
 
 Or Corybantes when at wine. 
 Than their accursed prophets roll 
 
 Voluminous periods half-divine. 
 A secret, sir, — to exorcise me 
 
 Make the idealistic sign.. 
 
 One last full beaker, — is it warm ? 
 
 Just bear my compliments, I pray, 
 Up to your friends. I mean no harm. 
 
 But should they chance to lose their way, 
 Be sure I 'd do the hospitable. 
 
 My blessing with you, sir, good day. 
 
 The twain laughed loud, and the grave Master smiled. 
 But when these frolic matin moods had ebbed. 
 They sought the landscape that was hung serene 
 Before them, a Hesperian scope that clomb 
 Northward from champaign unto champaign fair, 
 In slow ascension, till the silver haze 
 Languished in dreamy distance ; pastoral types 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES. yj 
 
 Of lovely contour, melting line in line, 
 
 Bold angles, winding mazes, gentle curves. 
 
 Mild slopes, basked in the rich dividuous Light, 
 
 Thereon unfolding all her tissues bright, 
 
 Cashmeres and damasks, lustrous tyrians, 
 
 Orange and auburn and deep lazuli. 
 
 And over all were sown with happy art 
 
 The cultured spaces, orchat valleys, groves, 
 
 Green pastures, sinuous silvers, sheets of glass, 
 
 White farmsteads, gleaming steeples, smiling vills j 
 
 And, intercepted by the jealous cliff. 
 
 Higher, the luminous fragment of a lake. 
 
 Suspended like a crescent ; and beyond. 
 
 The limit and blue-breasted shore of all, 
 
 A ridge of mountain propping skies that sank 
 
 From Vv^eight of their own splendor ; azure fields, 
 
 Wherein the thronging fleeces in full flock 
 
 Pastured at leisure, mimicked underneath 
 
 By loitering shadows browsing up the hills. 
 
 And these who nursed acquaintance with the lore 
 
 Artistic, conned the features of the scene 
 
 In liquid pedantries, caught up at school, 
 
 Of tint and mezzotint, chiaroscuro. 
 
 Thence touched upon the neighboring world of books, 
 
 Mixing with sensuous sweets abstruse delights 
 
 Of critic and discussive thought, until 
 
 With high and philosophic parle profound. 
 
 They sweetly countercharmed all sylvan sights, 
 
 Rapt on the inner motions of the mind. 
 
 But Vivian, long time mute because their words. 
 
38 HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 Though lined with classic graces, edged with wit 
 That smote the critic spark from every theme, 
 Fell on his troubled soul like flakes of fire. 
 Said bitterly, " I too once plied with joy 
 The loom of speech ornate, was proud to spin 
 My gossamer so fine it would afford 
 No footing to a sunbeam, or to tilt, 
 Empanoplied in logic and the like. 
 With trenchant swoops of burnished subtleties ; 
 Fondest to lead the struggling topic bound 
 With links ratiocinative j but no more. 
 For whom the great gulfs swallow, marshals not 
 His agony in sleek euphonious phrase. 
 I move through flaming deserts overswept 
 By thirsty winds, smothered by sandy drifts ; 
 And battered on the pebbly hills or tossed 
 On arid tides, languish afar from aid, 
 Weak fledgling of a zone of temperate skies \ 
 Or like the sea-god of untoward fate, 
 Float on the brine forlorn by headlands hoar. 
 The brother of the monster and the storm. 
 Weak, weary, maimed, forever bruised and torn, 
 Wearing upon my breast and thighs the stains, 
 The dross and cockle of a thousand shores." 
 
 And Arthur answered, half compassionate, 
 
 " Sad-hearted, ever piping mournful strains. 
 
 Compact of riddling, melancholy hints. 
 
 Wherefore pronounce so darkly of this ill 
 
 That would usurp your mind ? Perchance 't is but 
 
 A phantom, that if broached with hardy words 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 39 
 
 Or orbed about with clearer light, will pass. 
 
 The thought, turned burning to explore within, 
 
 Teems with illusion. Wiser who pursues 
 
 Expanse of vision, more embracing scope, 
 
 A larger circle. I am irked to see 
 
 Eyes always downcast, this despondent brow, 
 
 These lone and sombre breedings without smile, 
 
 In you whom all aforetime wont to praise 
 
 A bubbling fount of jocund fellowship, 
 
 A lavish sower of congenial talk, 
 
 Flying the light and laughter-trailing jest. 
 
 I hoped these peaks would lose your gathering clouds 
 
 Of heaviness in sounding showers of joy. 
 
 O why sit palsied, moaning to the past, 
 
 Ah darlings days, forever lost to me, 
 
 When will the period of the years present 
 
 Once more your features ! 'T is a better lore 
 
 That from courageous hearts the Infinite 
 
 Is never distant, proffering her wealth." 
 
 And Vivian smiled a little as he said, 
 His accent lightly tipped with irony, 
 " O rare condoler, whose smooth pity soothes 
 Gentlier than softest oil these biting wounds ! 
 
 happy friendj to whose enfranchised eye 
 The great world shows a crystal bead of dew, 
 From film to film transpicuous ! You err, 
 Hoping with remedies so light and swift 
 
 To charm from these fierce pangs their bitterness. 
 
 1 ask not of the past her jovial quips. 
 Hollow and vain in this oppressive hour. 
 
40 HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 Nor needs it that you set your words with thorns, 
 
 And tender tauntings of a mind too weak, 
 
 Or drag in valor like a bold magician, 
 
 Whose arts will exorcise the soul's despair. 
 
 Can valor hang the inky firmament 
 
 With starry lamps, or launch the sun on high. 
 
 Or bid the darkling moon renew her smiles ? 
 
 'T is light, sweet light of heaven's own christening, 
 
 Fresh from the unfathomable eyes of God, 
 
 For whose transcendent loveliness I yearn. 
 
 But man beats up a darkness with his light. 
 
 And this the rigorous thought would purge away. 
 
 Though eye and cheek be widowed of their lustres, 
 
 And the proud form be wasted to a shred." 
 
 Then Arthur, " Little of these doubts I know. 
 Not angling with the dialectic bait, 
 Nor spreading cunning toils of argument 
 May we make captive the deft element, 
 The mystic soul of life, our sum of truth. 
 What profit these ingenious sophistries, 
 Light j ugglery of narrow intellects. 
 The glitter and the pride of peacock wits ! 
 The bird of boldest wing, most fearless eye. 
 Trails not these gaudy hindrances. There are, 
 Who follow truth as sportsmen chase the hart. 
 Loving the sparkling joyance of pursuit, 
 The unleashed ardors of the quickened blood. 
 More than her proper being. These will loose 
 The balanced shaft or poise the javelin 
 To make revealment of their supple thews. 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 41 
 
 Leaving the game to moulder. I love not 
 The metaphysic and inquisitive 
 Dividing eye, rich in refining arts, 
 Disdainful of the living hand. O square 
 Your purposes to the advancing time. 
 And mingle with her labors. The first stroke 
 Will sweep your heavens, like a thunder-besom, 
 Bare of these gathering vapors." 
 
 And his words. 
 In earnestness so pitched above their wont. 
 Drew smiles from Paul and Vivian. Vivian then, 
 " O friend, whose thought is clear as summer pools, 
 I wronged you, deeming that your sympathy 
 Slighted my hour of trial as the wan 
 And sickly fancy of a straining mind. 
 That dealt with its own shadows, or would pluck 
 At visionary baubles. But this bold 
 Disclosure of a sure redeeming aid 
 Hits not the front of my necessity. 
 Labor long-plied amid the fervid crowd 
 May dull the promptings of the heart's desire, 
 As fools may drown disaster in their wine. 
 But this large hope that leads me on, foot-charmed, 
 Grows but by clearness of the eye within. 
 Until the higher cycle fill its flower, 
 I cannot pause to mould the things of sense. 
 For ah, not thus the speculative mind 
 May be defrauded of his ample realm. 
 And that imperial sceptre which he bears. 
 His irreversible great period 
 He must fulfil, though baffled by the folds 
 
42 
 
 HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 Of a beguiling darkness j and not less 
 Burgeons a faith that some bright light will fall 
 From heaven upon me and complete my hope. 
 But now the night oppresses. Feeling round 
 Witli hands of inquiry, I oft alight 
 On monsters of the midnight. Demons flock, 
 And spectres startle. Mocked by every wind, 
 The spirit aspirant to holiness 
 Pours all his golden homage at the feet 
 Of gods that perish. Gorgonizing eyes 
 Stare on me from the wide and visible world. 
 Turning the lenses inward, I am awed 
 By fearful mysteries whose dusky wings 
 Shadow the wondrous thing we name the Self, 
 And all it can and cannot, may not, may ; 
 And by those giant-browned antagonisms, 
 Whose marriage must prelude the birth of life. 
 Yea, and my soul is tenfold more confused 
 By glimpses of the god-like Ultimate 
 That glows in gold on peaks of the Ideal, 
 Beheld at times from these thick-misted vales, 
 Wherein I falter. Over all, the spell, 
 The monstrous shadow of a creed that took 
 Prisoner the boyish heart in its first prayers, 
 Broods and confounds. I am infirm to pass 
 And thrid the gordian glooms of unbelief." 
 
 Then Paul, the dreaming elf, who would have loved 
 Of old to haunt the Mereotic wave 
 W^ith anchoretic fancies ; he who urged 
 The lower duties languidly, though tuned 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 43 
 
 Most finely unto high idealisms, 
 
 Broke out in ringing accents, silver-clear, 
 
 Raised from their wonted soft Eolian flow ; 
 
 " You spake of the Ideal. Can the voice, 
 
 Once freighted with the sweetness of this note, 
 
 Relapse to sounds of sorrow ? Lo, it stands 
 
 Afar, the perfect circle which the ages move 
 
 To finish, or the perfect melody 
 
 Whose strong sweet thunders aye enchant the ears 
 
 Of high-enthroned eternity, or yet 
 
 The perfect poem, epos of all time, 
 
 God's art. And most men make a word, but some 
 
 A line, and some with souls of heavenly fire 
 
 A rhythmic sentence, words and sense complete. 
 
 Behold the lordly solace of all ills. 
 
 The Ideal, if we follow it with love. 
 
 Not fainting ; and its radiance is the sure 
 
 Sole revelation of our God Most High. 
 
 O then pursue it through all wrongs of time. 
 
 Onward, through gloom of mist and dash of hail, 
 
 Onward, through bolts of scorn and mockery. 
 
 Onward, through life and death until there dawn 
 
 The greater life and bathe the soul in light." 
 
 And from the depths of his despondency. 
 The mournful voice of Vivian slowly came. 
 "O Paul, you bear an ardent prophet-heart, 
 By nature lifted o'er this troubled sphere, 
 To catch the brightness of a statelier morn 
 To which our mortal prime is patched and wan ; 
 Fortunate too, in those who early shaped 
 
44 HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 The plastic spirit. For these glowing words 
 I needs must love you. But you aim amiss. 
 Shooting sublime above my head you skip 
 My lowly plight. For yet between us roars 
 A gulf which not my boldest faith can bridge, 
 Abysmal, drear. I mark the rosy hopes, 
 The pride and inspiration of my youth, 
 Turn pale and fall, transpierced with shafts of death, 
 The strong colossal purposes, like snow. 
 Thaw to a gliding wave. This doubt has grown 
 In fierce Satanic hardihood, and laid 
 His giant arms about the seated plinths 
 Of nature and wellnigh has tugged away 
 The firm and old foundations of the world. 
 The day may come, perchance the morn will break, 
 When I shall mount on some celestial wing, 
 And catch these splendors where they have their 
 birth." 
 
 Perceiving that his time of passion wore 
 
 His heart, the white-haired Father said, with looks 
 
 Kindled by love and earnest sympathy, 
 
 " My son, your keel must ride tempestuous seas. 
 
 But lose not hope. Days dutiful to truth, 
 
 Though subject long to tempest, are secure. 
 
 Endure and wrestle and the end will come. 
 
 The fashions of the world are manifold, 
 
 But the divine eternity is one. 
 
 There are to whom the burthen of the age 
 
 Is grievous, and its work and worship seem 
 
 Maimed of their lawful beauty. These must sail 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 45 
 
 From sheltered harbors past the promontories, 
 Into the boundless ocean. And of these, 
 My son, are you. Fear not, for you will reach 
 Fortunate isles, and margins paved with gold, 
 Beauteous abodes, the haunts of dewy peace, 
 Winds musical and low. O lose not hope. 
 Ever the noble mind when transient 
 From certain to uncertain, old to new. 
 Must plant a passing foot on skepticism. 
 Doubt guards with dragon-coil the sweet demesne. 
 Where truth, belief and worship grow, and hang 
 Three golden apples, the Hesperian fruit 
 Of life, whose winning is the end of man. 
 If this be conquered, lo, a land is yours 
 Where hang the ripest blossoms of the world, 
 Where, cherished on the sweets of rich repose, 
 The soul, 'gainst all degrees of tainting clay, 
 Itself shall temper to heroic use." 
 
 Then Arthur cried for luncheon, from his throat 
 To chase Plutonian savors, as he said. 
 So they brake fast, and where a gurgling rill 
 Mantled his shelvy coves with drifts of spume. 
 Appeased their thirst. "The cavern there," said 
 
 Paul, 
 " Has breathed upon us with Trophonian gloom, 
 A power of sadness. Rise, let us forego 
 Threnetic notes, and slip to yon fair world. 
 Whose bright eye haunts me with a sense of bliss j 
 And as the prelude to a livelier strain, 
 I '11 sound a welcome to the spirit of Joy, 
 
46 HIGHLAiYD RAMBLES. 
 
 Our guide and chosen compeer till the eve." 
 And while they moved across the vale, he sang : 
 
 He stands on the mountains, 
 
 He darts through the vallies, 
 From the foam of the fountains 
 
 He laughs and he sallies, 
 He leaps in the torrent, he speaks in the thunder, 
 Gaily flashing and flowing. 
 
 His fire and his passion 
 Lead him on, ever growing 
 
 Diviner in fashion, 
 Arrayed in fresh hues and new garments of wonder. 
 
 Has he a palace ? 
 
 Where is his aerie ? 
 
 With spirits of faery 
 He haunts the sweet chalice 
 
 Of lily or rose ; 
 Or clothed with the glances. 
 
 The soft crimson glows 
 From cool eyes of morning, 
 
 He weaves his wild dances 
 Of laughter and scorning. 
 Through far cerulean fields ; 
 
 Or rides a strong warrior 
 
 Over rock, moat, and barrier, 
 To pierce the heart of darkness 
 With the million darts he wields ; 
 Or thrids a bright maiden 
 
 The tangles of our dreams, 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 To awaken and gladden 
 
 With auroral smiles and beams. 
 This is the bearer 
 
 Of music and mirth, 
 The broad world shows fairer 
 
 In manhood and worth, 
 When his light pinions sound up the meadows, 
 To perch in our household shadows. 
 The secret and subtle 
 Swift dance of life's shuttle 
 
 Obeys his desire. 
 On the day's mighty bosom 
 The hours burst in blossom 
 
 Of heavenly fragrance and fire. 
 Comes a presence of beauty 
 
 To soothe and caress us, 
 A strength for all duty 
 
 To lift and to bless us. 
 And the yoke of endeavor 
 Sits light as a flower, 
 While our souls grow forever 
 In sweetness and power. 
 O, elf-king, we love thee, thy heart is so glad, 
 Come with us, that we too may forget to be sad. 
 
 They traced a meagre path that crawled in fear 
 The giddy margin of the dark abyss, 
 Naked, save where a lonely bush, depth-charmed, 
 Leaned out with all its buds against the void, 
 Like some fair maid that ends a fierce despair ; 
 Young Sappho toppling from the island crag. 
 
 47 
 
48 HIGHLAND RAMBLES, 
 
 Thence through a rocky breadth of woodland old 
 
 Descending, they espied not far a slope 
 
 Rippling with arid shoals of tawny wheat, 
 
 That fought with rock and sun for a lean ear, 
 
 Flung like a foam-wreath from the surging sea 
 
 Of tillage. But anon they met a breath 
 
 Of meadowy balm, and in a pastured glade 
 
 Touched foot on sward and found the cots of men. 
 
 Pausing a space within a cool recess, 
 
 What time the aged sire regained his breath, 
 
 They watched a merle, his dainty cowl back thrown, 
 
 Cloistered in leaves, confess his nut-brown mate. 
 
 Keeping a hard suspicion in his eye j 
 
 But as she closed, he trilled an allegro, 
 
 A rich, absolving note. Listening they heard 
 
 The copse-clad shoulder of the woodland heave 
 
 And palpitate, and looking, saw not far 
 
 A form whose broad and battlemented breast 
 
 Clove the full leafage as a swimmer cleaves 
 
 A sleeping water, till upon them fell 
 
 His booming stride of thunder. And they turned 
 
 To fix a curious stare on eyes, whose glance. 
 
 Couched under beetling shagginess, leaped forth 
 
 From deeps of autumn gray, a force to seize 
 
 And tear piecemeal the thing whereon it fell. 
 
 Ten paces off he halted. And what time 
 
 The green wake of his coming slept again. 
 
 And ebbed the echoes of his footing, shod 
 
 With clangor, firm he stood, columnar, calm. 
 
 Striking on all their forms with whetted looks. 
 
 Coursing from forehead unto foot, again 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 49 
 
 With critic leisure upward, till he met 
 
 The smile that rippled o'er the cheek of Paul, 
 
 Offering salute. Half grimly then he said, 
 
 " A stranger in these parts, I take it, sir." 
 
 And Paul, " You have not missed. We sought a 
 
 land 
 Fattest in kine and milk and cheese, and here 
 We find it Canaan wheresoe'er we move. 
 A courteous friend has made us happy guests, 
 And teaches us the marvels of the land." 
 
 And glancing on the Sire, the farmer said, 
 
 " Methinks this is the man whom people call 
 
 The fool of maniac fancies, airy-brained. 
 
 Long locked within a rugged mountain glen. 
 
 Some name him infidel and atheist, 
 
 Mystic, philosopher, and pantheist. 
 
 Or transcendent- God help my barn-yard wit, 
 
 I cannot drag their chain of syllables. 
 
 Some say, his v^^ords have little meaning in them. 
 
 And some, though there, 't is hard to come across. 
 
 But I, a settler here these latter years. 
 
 Know nought of him, save what the ear has picked 
 
 From random rumors. Yet my heart loves not 
 
 Monastic pratings in these rotten days. 
 
 When states are piloted by false pretense, 
 
 And low intrigue usurps the seats of rule. 
 
 God strike the feeble leaders of the times 
 
 With hermit fancies. But for every man, 
 
 Let him come down into the world and aid 
 
 His narrow brethren of the bounded earth." 
 
so 
 
 HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 Such words and more to his impassioned thought 
 
 Gave vent tempestuous, while either arm 
 
 Was wheeled in fiery circle. When his tides 
 
 Had dashed themselves to foam, the three brake out 
 
 In laughter loud, prolonged and reboant, 
 
 That frightened every echo. But again 
 
 He flashed in monstrous wit, with rolling eyes 
 
 Fresh-frenzied from his soul. 
 
 " And who are ye 
 That play so liberal with your mirth ? Ye seem 
 Some of that pale-cheeked swarm of aping wits, 
 Who from their pedant desks buzz round our farms, 
 Profound with sage, outlandish theories 
 And slothful doctrine, teaching, men should rust 
 Eremite, banished from industrious wa3'S, 
 Battening on vacant thoughts of God knows what, 
 With scorn of common strivings. College-boys, 
 Bantlings of thin chameleon diet, their 
 Small brains awry from meddling with the books. 
 Or packed with speculative stuff that seems 
 True knowledge, come with shrill grasshopper chirp, 
 High-browed contempt and academic strut, 
 To turn adrift the wisdom of their sires. 
 And smile away their modes. With hands of silk 
 And sinews sapless grown from arid ease. 
 They hope to choke the monsters of the world. 
 And blunt the thorns of life. Not theirs the force 
 To grapple with the labor and the pain. 
 With sufferance and persistence to unlock 
 The oracular lips of living wisdom. Bah ! 
 These are a little folk, the spawn of the time." 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 51 
 
 Again they laughed. But Paul ceased first and said, 
 
 " Amid the weltering currents of these days 
 
 All keels of worth anchor in secret calm, 
 
 And seek the covert arms of windless coves. 
 
 I doubt not there are men of rural thoughts, 
 
 Names not yet bandied by the crowd, whose hands 
 
 Could harness this wild turbulence to wheels 
 
 Of nobler triumphs than we know, or hold 
 
 The helm of ordinance firmly to the Just. 
 
 These souls, if you could lure them from their nooks. 
 
 Might purge the civic ministration, build 
 
 A people strong and noble, through defects 
 
 Of fear or surging shocks of circumstance. 
 
 Advance their kingly purposes, and found 
 
 More during nationality." 
 
 But then 
 Arthur let loose his wonted fierce disdain : 
 " Miraculous statesmen these ! Rare kings of men ! 
 Fie, Paul, you lack acquaintance with the world. 
 Your eyes droop alway, and you miss the thing 
 That woos you to observe it. Who would ride 
 The storm, must like the eagle first make strong 
 His wings by buffeting its thunder-breath. 
 Ha, ha, God help your sceptred anchorites. 
 Far wiser they to tend their cabbages, 
 To train the rose or list the robin pipe. 
 Than feed the popular dragon on the cates 
 Of delicate idealisms. Behold, 
 On all sides jars of bias and degree, 
 A blatant discord hoarse and bold, would fright 
 Their soft ears sensitive to woodland notes, 
 
52 
 
 HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 Or stealthy springes of fine policy 
 
 Trip them from magisterial heights. O kings ! " 
 
 And while he spake, the farmer's wrath was laid, 
 
 As angry feathers on a falcon's neck 
 
 Sink one by one. From point to point they passed, 
 
 Until the frozen sweetness of his soul 
 
 Thawed to a kindly flow of courtesy, 
 
 Deep, musical. And pointing out his grange. 
 
 He urged them to make trial of his board, 
 
 His garden-fruits, his cider and his beef. 
 
 And see the wonders of his farm. They went. 
 
 And then his mellow tones of welcome fell 
 
 As ripe as mssets from the boughs of autumn. 
 
 Forsaking wood and dell, they crossed a mead 
 
 That drank his footsteps, caught anon the house. 
 
 Trim as a lass that waits her lover, flanked 
 
 By ample lengths of storehouse and of barn. 
 
 And from the porch shot, like a stream of light. 
 
 Or foamy cataract dipping in the dusk 
 
 Of hanging rocks, Margaret, the farmer's child. 
 
 On light and fairy-twinkling feet she came 
 
 In maiden glee, her rubious lips apart 
 
 With treble welcome. But, the strangers spied. 
 
 Her graceful motions fluttered into rest, 
 
 Like doves that float to earth, their buoyant wings 
 
 Shot-crippled on a sudden. So she hung 
 
 In sweet dismay, until the father's lips, 
 
 Closing on hers, restored her. And they passed 
 
 To the inner cool, and gladly, hunger-bit. 
 
 Found spread the table, and the cider drawn. 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 53 
 
 They dined. The cider circled. The discourse 
 
 Sparkled with many a lustre, like a brook, 
 
 Wayward ; laughing from trivial theme to theme 
 
 With vagrant impulse, slowly deepening down 
 
 To one full flood of wisdom from the host 
 
 On that which made the perfect farmer, how 
 
 The flocks are fitliest handled, how the crops, 
 
 The times, the seasons, economic laws 
 
 That dealing out full measure, dealt not out 
 
 To poorness and perpetual emptiness. 
 
 His speech, aflame with native idiom. 
 
 Keen-phrased and topic-cleaving like a spear, 
 
 Dashed them in torrent. And then Arthur said, 
 
 " My fortune, sir, to-day has half begot 
 
 Resolve to quit the haunts of learned brows, 
 
 Put by the hopes that pointed to the heights 
 
 Of place and fame, and couched in rustic peace, 
 
 Wed wisdom to repose, and glean by love 
 
 Lessons of beauty from all simple things. 
 
 Those rare and golden moods wherefrom are born 
 
 The thoughts which are a music in themselves, 
 
 And murmur round the lips of lofty men, 
 
 Are wooed and won by these sweet-breathing days. 
 
 That enter sandaled with soft silence, stoled 
 
 In robes of household quietness, with gifts 
 
 Of mellow leisure, tempered by all sights 
 
 And sounds the meadows offer and the groves." 
 
 The farmer answered him with words that twanged 
 Like strings just lightened of the shaft. " Not you. 
 I read a better story in your eye. 
 
54 HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 Your soul is strained to action, and to hold 
 
 In poise the lightnings of the State, to feel 
 
 The vital pulses of all purposes. 
 
 I love you better for it. Give me breath. 
 
 I bustle or I die. But who would drone 
 
 Forever in the hive, when all around 
 
 Are tasked with noble functions ? Bah ! the heart 
 
 Is sickened. And I think the race of men 
 
 Grows feebler down from sire to son ; more greed, 
 
 Less sufferance ; and God knows the end. 
 
 Books may be well to help a sleepy hour 
 
 When rains are on the roof, or monstrous snows 
 
 Have penned us in the fold. But son of mine 
 
 Shall never thin his brain with watery stuff 
 
 That idle poets brew, nor snarl his thoughts 
 
 With knots and tangles which our pigmy wits 
 
 Tie and untie, and name philosophy." 
 
 But when his weaponed glances, roving round. 
 
 Came to the full-orbed wonder in the eyes 
 
 Of Margaret, love disarmed them. And he said, 
 
 " Nay, sweet one, this is true. And heed you well 
 
 That when the seasons have full-blown the rose 
 
 It lavish not its heart on every breeze 
 
 That wantons round its petals. Yea, I swear 
 
 You shall not taste of wifehood, but shall pass 
 
 The years in maiden ponderings, ere you wed 
 
 A dehcate cavalier of this plume, 
 
 Who, all serene in musk and oil and glove, 
 
 Rides to convince the world of judgment. Bah! 
 
 I 'd yoke these essenced suitors to the plough. 
 
 And bruise their snov/y palms with axe and spade, 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 55 
 
 Forcing them toil, like Jacob, many years 
 For her they loved." 
 
 And Margaret blushed and laughed. 
 But Paul, who could but think this bolt, though 
 
 aimed 
 Askance, was loosed to glance on him, laughed loud. 
 They rose and moved to spy the mammoth farm. 
 Fallow, and tilth, and pasture. Past them danced 
 The maiden Margaret, hasting blithe afield, 
 Bearing a well-stored basket, to refresh 
 The fainting hearts of the worn laborers. 
 About her sang the fragrant meadow airs, 
 And with her went a gladness and a grace. 
 One with the sweet breath of the swarming flowers, 
 And the besieging noise of golden bees. 
 And far before, a force, of her approach 
 Prelude, that touched the toilers in the maize 
 With stillness, and their gazing eyes with love. 
 Then one led up a ruddy cow, dark-hoofed ; 
 " A four-year-old in March," the farmer said, 
 " My dairy-queen, I had her brought for you. 
 She takes the prize next autumn." And he conned 
 Her alphabet of beauty slowly o'er : 
 Long face, clear jaw, fineness of curving horn, 
 Full chine and heavy flank and breadth of loin, 
 Bold eyes and clear, which all the herd obey. 
 Straight back, wide hips, neat shoulder, slender 
 
 thigh. 
 Thin tail and glossy hair, as soft as silk. 
 And when she moved, he bade them mark her gait, 
 Free motions, supple joints, and stately port. 
 
56 HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 He named his duties, spread them out through 
 
 lengths 
 Of critic dissertation ; to his plans 
 The measure of fulfillment granted, or 
 How finely framed and aptly into act 
 Translated ; sowing here and there the hints 
 Of a conceiving, keen supremacy j 
 Last, showed a long-nursed hope that in his heart 
 Smouldered like Etna on from year to year, 
 Yet unessayed, but biding there its hour, 
 Spoke of its reason, manner, scope, and growth, 
 And large prosperities that would attend 
 Its consummation. Radiant then from all, 
 His full disclosure, their rapt audience — 
 The transient spleen that clouded his first looks 
 Flung down in tempest — forth from eye and cheek 
 The latent sun of kindness brake in splendor. 
 The afternoon slipped past them like a ghost, 
 Till with the level sun was slowly said 
 Farewell, followed by lingering words, again 
 Farewell, the while he crushed their pulpy palms 
 In one that might have rent the lion, bronzed 
 From unreluctant toil. In genial mood 
 Homeward, as the first dews came down, they strolled. 
 
 In front the sunset waned ; a glorious arch, 
 Whereon the seas of beauty brake in foam 
 Of gold ; grandeur not overgrand, but mild 
 And perceant through meekness. And behind. 
 Grey twilight built the pillars of her home. 
 Above, through argent-rippling tides the moon. 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 57 
 
 Sweet-gliding argosy of poets' joys, 
 
 Drove her translucent beak through firth and strait. 
 
 They strode into the west with souls that drank 
 
 The triple heaven, lips mute and asking eyes. 
 
 Until there fell a darkness and they all 
 
 Breathed freer, found again themselves and talked. 
 
 Child of the evening, beautiful, serene. 
 
 The Patriarch held them thralled with ripest words, 
 
 Named in that sacred hour all mystic names. 
 
 Wove symbols, builded types, unfolded laws j 
 
 Shattered a drop of truth to radiant spray. 
 
 Ravished the fragrant heart of flowering thought 
 
 With a sciential witchery as of heaven, 
 
 Or edified with plastic force remote 
 
 Conceptions, till they stood instinct with form j 
 
 Upon the tremulous spaces of the night 
 
 Loosing melodious rivers, until each 
 
 Knew surely that it was the golden Age. 
 
58 
 
 HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 III. 
 
 Bruised with travail, dark in mind, 
 Stung from land to land in vain, 
 Yearns the harried youth to find 
 Oasis to cool his brain. 
 To stay awhile his flaming quest 
 And lull the clamor in his breast. 
 
 Gentle goddess of the sphere. 
 Nature hears his piteous wail. 
 Plies her facile hands to rear. 
 Heart-deep in umbrageous vale, 
 Opiate bowers whose poppied pillows 
 Lure delicious sleep to furl 
 Wings of languor. Crystals curl 
 Round its woof in whispering billows, 
 Soothest, drowsiest in their purl. 
 
 From her pipe gush sweeter strains 
 Than the pathos of Apollo 
 When the passion thrilled his veins 
 By Daphne in Thessalian hollow. 
 The youth forgets his mortal pains. 
 Charmed in will, he hastes to follow : 
 Odorous glooms and alleys thrids, 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 Sinks in her luxurious blisses, 
 While she presses honied kisses 
 On his slow-unwrinkled lids \ 
 Summons bees from violet dells 
 To steal the melrose from its cells 
 And feed his slumber-budded lips. 
 From yellow skirts of pendulous bells, 
 Meadowy awns, or scented drips 
 Pimpling the lily's glowing eaves. 
 Cicadas pluck the fresh-orbed dew 
 To cool his temples through and through. 
 O'er his roseate thighs she snows 
 Crocus, pansy, dark primrose j 
 Softer croons than wooing turtle 
 Spells that deepen his repose j 
 Wand of amber cinct with m5n:tle 
 Waves, and through her dusk pavilion 
 Sails young Phantasy on pinions 
 Golden, purple and vermilion. 
 While the ambrosial shadows tingle, 
 Where his train of burnished minions, 
 Dreams and visions, flit and mingle. 
 These shall pilot his calm sleep 
 Through balmy twilights slumber-deep, 
 And make in baths of mildest splendor 
 His spirit white and moist and tender. 
 
 She will keep thee, darling child. 
 Young and whole and undefiled. 
 For she caught thee and first brought thee 
 From the far celestial forges. 
 
 59 
 
6o HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 Where from inorganic night, 
 Glowing with immortal light, 
 The young soul of man emerges. 
 In these fragrant robes she wraps thee, 
 In these golden visions laps thee, 
 In the silence of thy blossom. 
 And her love for thee is deeper 
 Than all seas and skies, sweet sleeper. 
 Shielded in her inmost bosom, 
 Thou shalt hear the mystic beating, 
 , Thine shall be the awful greeting. 
 
 "No jarring mood to-day, nor fretful thought. 
 Fold up the sombre weeds of gloom and take 
 The garments of the morning. Flush the heart 
 With light, and fill the waking eyes with joy. 
 Come up, appareled in the grace of youth, 
 Into auroral gardens, and in bowers 
 Of sunrise and of sunset and the blue 
 Pavilions pitched by the meridian day. 
 From brimming beakers all his lyric hours 
 Quaff nectar, which a hundred Hebes bring j 
 The gush, the gleam, the fragrance and the bloom, 
 Assiduous murmurs, floating minstrelsies, 
 Cerulean tints, the orange glow, the rose. 
 Earth, air and sky in triple ecstasy. 
 Come forth, and we will move until we find 
 Altars of nature fitly garlanded, 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES, 6 1 
 
 There to lay down our gifts of reverence. 
 For who will dare to mock these shining hours 
 With eyes that fetch their light from suns long set, 
 Or hopes that are not born from them, but chafe 
 The heart to a warm foam ! But we will rove 
 Chasing a bird's wing, and will lose our way 
 With every arch misleading brook that calls. 
 These lightly-spun vagaries will beguile 
 Dark fancies, and with souls that can obey 
 The sweet impulsions of a later hour, 
 The sober warnings and high questionings. 
 Will we return when all the murmuring vans 
 Forsake the shutting portals of the flower, 
 And this slow semi-circle round the pine, 
 Travelled by his own shade, is drawn full curve." 
 
 So to his young initiate the Sire, 
 
 Just as in dewy dusks of breathless boughs. 
 
 The flutes, long time to finest warblings tuned, 
 
 Chimed into full orchestral prologue clear. 
 
 Greeting that greater bird whose mighty breast, 
 
 Fire-flushed through all its down, now slowly rose 
 
 From eyries hung upon his orient clifis. 
 
 And when the motions of his wings made heave 
 
 The air with breezy billows, they slipped down 
 
 Into the blossomed levels of the world 
 
 Among the mellow-throated kine and heard 
 
 The early cow-boy peal his loud halloo, 
 
 The cock fife shrilly and the peacock scream 
 
 Across the gathering murmur of the land. 
 
 Full summer throbbed in the pulse of things and lent 
 
62 HIGHLAND RAMBLES, 
 
 The bough its densest umbrage, on the wing, 
 That flitted, seemed to shed its fairest hues, 
 Mellowed the streams and with a balanced palm 
 Began to round the apple and to turn 
 Upon her lathe the neck of the young pear. 
 She spun again the frequent rose, relaced 
 The slender bodice of tlie lily, sowed 
 The willing daisy in all meads, and fanned 
 The thickets into tongues of flowery fire ; 
 Into the cherry's orbing cheek imbreathed 
 Its various lustre and unto the peach 
 The silken earnest of its ripeness, gave. 
 Most fearless nestled in her lap the lark. 
 Embowering a covert for her young. 
 And in green grots on his depending cells 
 Wrought the unresting bee, thoughtless of harm. 
 Thus she, a glowing vintage, helped the brain 
 Of the creative year to body forth 
 His music and his passion into forms 
 Of visible life. 
 
 With lingering steps they moved. 
 And where the dairies, packed in mottled herd, 
 Urged patiently the never wearied jaw, 
 They caught the glint of furbished cans that 
 
 brimmed 
 With creamy foam, and, plump in arm and waist, 
 Their foreheads buried in the silky flank, 
 The milk-maids pressing fulsome udders down. 
 The turkey-cock let fall his glossy fans 
 And marched in strut before them j in the grass. 
 Filled with maternal fears the clucking hen 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 63 
 
 Stalked midmost of her brood of chirping chicks, 
 
 With eye and beak that hunted worm and midge. 
 
 On cribs half plundered of their golden store 
 
 The pigeon pruned her purples, or soft cooed 
 
 From roof to roof. They heard the fervid hives. 
 
 Under the broad limbs of ancestral elms. 
 
 Hum up and down their snowy lines with swarms 
 
 Of rival peoples going in and out, 
 
 Serfs, kings and queens and thronged ambassadors, 
 
 Thigh-laden with the tribute of the fields. 
 
 In garden plots the timely matron purged 
 
 Her beds of weed insidious, while yet 
 
 The soil, dew-tender, gave her leave. And lo, 
 
 Majestic v/ith complacent footsteps slow. 
 
 Through every province of his fat estate, 
 
 His geese, his ducks, his horses and his kine, 
 
 Moved forth and back the arbiter of all. 
 
 The mammoth landlord, bellied like a whale. 
 
 Cloud-crowned with incense rendered to himself 
 
 From carven censer of a monstrous pipe. 
 
 All round were breadths of wheat in saffron glow, 
 
 Full-ripe and bending down a teeming ear 
 
 Meekly, while banded reapers struck in tune. 
 
 And formed the equal swath. In clovery crofts 
 
 Echoed the clinking cog where stealthy blades. 
 
 Darting like light their keen and glittering fangs 
 
 Within dark sheaths, shore from the dimpled cheeks 
 
 Of all the rosy knolls the virgin beard. 
 
 In half-cropt pastures fled the wanton colt. 
 
 Or shook his unkempt mane across the rails, 
 
 Contemplative with curious eye and ear. 
 
64 HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 And dusky quires that peopled every holt 
 Struck loud the choric cymbal, without jar, 
 And alway in a mesh of his own strains 
 Tangled, the bobolink fluttered overhead. 
 
 Drunk with the ambrosial liquor which the day 
 
 Had pressed since early morn against their lips, 
 
 Weary of voyaging the billowy beams, 
 
 Upon a lawny isle of thickest shade 
 
 Stranded, they lay, and drowsed to languorous 
 
 dreams, 
 What time in cloudless zenith flamed the sun. 
 This was a scented cool of lofty woods, 
 Furrowed with dingles, starred with rose-thickets, 
 Slope-fledge with hazel. Upon clustering banks 
 Couched round in genial mood at ample ease, 
 They drank a wind that, sighing from the south. 
 Embraced the amorous aspen and enforced 
 Quick tones of love and pressed with fragrant lips, 
 Fresh from amours with all the meadow flowers. 
 Delightful kisses on their brows. In front. 
 Smooth as a sea becalmed from shore to shore, 
 The champaign stretched his lazy length afar ; 
 Broad leas, luxuriant woodlands, shining creeks, 
 The waving maize, the yellow grain, the math, 
 And eastward the great lake in silver sheen. 
 Sown with white flakes of sail. The hills were lapt 
 In fire and breezes tipped their plumes with flame. 
 The browsing kine forsook the sunny wolds. 
 Huddled in leafy twilights of the brakes. 
 Closing their eyes and by their odorous breath 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 6S 
 
 Alluring humming swarms of parasites. 
 
 The brindled ox before his burden trailed 
 
 Reluctantly the alternating hoof, 
 
 And lagging teamsters spared the leathern thong. 
 
 The couchant lark was hid in grassy nooks, 
 
 Nor cooed the wild dove from his firry bough. 
 
 But in the sultry surf that chafed their strand, 
 
 To shivery pipes in morrice wild the thin 
 
 Cicada danced and solemn butterflies 
 
 Floated on dappled wings, and sweetly gleamed 
 
 The girdles of a hundred hasting bees, 
 
 Or at long spells a vagrant humming-bird 
 
 Fanned cool a fainting rose with restless plumes. 
 
 Only were heard chewink, pewee or wren. 
 
 Or nut-hatch beating lonely drum, or tit 
 
 Sounding his lullaby. Great Pan unfurled 
 
 His sluggish lids and from his hairy lips 
 
 Down dropped the morning pipe whose warbled joy. 
 
 Bubbling from million stops, had wearied all 
 
 The echoes, sweet as when he charmed his founts 
 
 Msenalian or his groves in Homole. 
 
 Great Pan grew faint and loosed his shagginess 
 
 Where woodland shuttles wove a seamless shade, 
 
 In dreamy ambush stretched, while downy airs 
 
 Breathed lethe, and the world v/as hush to nurse 
 
 His slumber into full oblivious depths. 
 
 From dozy noddings waked, they mused a space 
 Silent, till Paul flung out a passionate strophe ; 
 " Not Araby nor Arcady, all sweet 
 Castalian sounds, nor choicest scents of Ind 
 
66 HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 Vie with thy wondrous round of blandishments 
 Nor match the myriad charms that meet in thee, 
 O pride of summer days, whose golden feet 
 Sport on the blue slopes of a thousand hiJls, 
 Whose wings with soft ambrosial murmurings 
 Distill creative heat into thy heart, 
 O world ! Even that proud forsaken one 
 Of Florence, loneliest, mournfullest, his eyes 
 Soothed from their fiery wanderings on thy face, 
 His passion calmed from that supremest heaven, 
 Had owned no fairer sight in Paradise." 
 
 And Vivian then in passionate antistrophe, 
 ^' Ah me, to be a child, a simple child 
 Of nature, couched within her lap and thrilled 
 With warm and rhythmic pulses of delight 
 From her dear hand, to w^atch her stately eyes 
 Yearning from clear deeps of maternal joy, 
 To drink melodious utterance of her love 
 Steeping the bruised soul in happy tears, 
 To catch the burning oracles that well 
 Fresh-fountained from her lips with gentle ease 
 Past Delphic, while mild valor would conform 
 The rounded scope and purpose of the soul 
 Unto the holy rigor of her law ! " 
 
 " O well, in sooth, my son," the Master said. 
 " Forever far from you the hollow speech, 
 The light lip-wooings, fickle janty loves, 
 Mock adorations of lean hearts who sound 
 Her lofty titles on unholy lips, 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 67 
 
 And chant about her lightning-girdled throne 
 
 The profanation of obsequious praise ; 
 
 For whom she keeps disdain, eternal, cold. 
 
 Far, too, the paltry arrogance of crude 
 
 Unloving souls, who would from God divorce 
 
 His chosen forms, divest him of his worlds, 
 
 In which he is appareled from of old. 
 
 Nor these she pities, but from her sublime 
 
 Abysses hurls derision loud and deep. 
 
 She would be viewed with meekest poet-eyes, 
 
 And to the imperious knock of worldly men 
 
 Frames her response in meagre syllables. 
 
 Is nature stark t And wear her lips no smile ? 
 
 And do her plastic hands nothing create ? 
 
 Behold, she breathes, she moves, and forward bears 
 
 Time and the spaces and the stars v/ith her. 
 
 Yea, man, this creature of divinest pangs, 
 
 Prone child of prayers and upward-yearning eyes, 
 
 Upon her voyages the vast Inform 
 
 Unto a shore for which he ever peers 
 
 And sees not. Most unsearchably she holds 
 
 Her marble robes about her awful face. 
 
 Nor can we speak of that eternal goal 
 
 She goes to touch, but through her sacred veil 
 
 Love radiates, and glimpses of the Good. 
 
 Nor deem it lightly uttered here, that one, 
 
 Who from his cradle has gone forth with her. 
 
 The glad and childlike mirror of her moods. 
 
 Sharing her sorrows and her joys, has roamed 
 
 Disconsolate amid her dark eclipse. 
 
 And dazed his soul against her splendor-brows, 
 
68 HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 And on the billows of her effluent smile 
 Played like a sea-god, boldly should pronounce 
 That what he best has known or deepest felt, 
 Love, passion, worship or clear ecstasy. 
 Has had in her its day-spring and from her 
 Has blessed him and uplifted. 'T is ordained 
 That thus the soul of man should be evoked. 
 And made a reverent witness of itself. 
 From the full fountain of the heart go forth 
 Sweet influences of delight that teach 
 The wide and dark abysses to be fair. 
 And that within beholds itself without. 
 Mirrored in the transpicuous universe, 
 And thus beholding, knows itself divine. 
 For what the cloud withholds the star reveals. 
 And what I find not in the silver sea 
 Sleeping all day upon his sunny shores, 
 The rich and glossy folds of the great Deep 
 Beyond the stars, rain softly down on me. 
 And thus all forms and motions of the world 
 Lure forth the soul to know herself and find 
 Her limits vanishing like mists of dawn. 
 Her sphere containing and uniting all. 
 Her paths slow-widening to the infinite. 
 This is her heavenly dower of liberty, 
 Her dearest gift, a beauty not her own. 
 Yet know, ray children, ever since the mind 
 Contemplative has poured a light full-orbed. 
 Great hearts have leaned unto the godly faith, — 
 Unproven, should it chance, thereby a faith 
 The more insensuous, whose hands reach out 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 69 
 
 Past dialectic and the thought's concept, — 
 
 That nature from her rising to her set, 
 
 Her lordly elements, her ordinance, 
 
 Streams forth in mystic effluence from the soul, 
 
 Not brute nor diverse ; a white beam unseen, 
 
 But on the bosom of an evening cloud 
 
 Impinged, a spray of colors ; or a sea 
 
 That breaks his steadfast calm from zone to zone 
 
 To joy in his own beauty and to catch 
 
 The shimmer of his countless crests. Thus she, 
 
 From the one soul in separate, to man 
 
 Is symbol of that more majestic man 
 
 He marches to become j a hope, a zeal, 
 
 A piety. Thus she in him, but he 
 
 In fulness of the imperishable soul, 
 
 Finds his due term. In her as in a rose 
 
 God blossoms into beauty for a day. 
 
 From her as from a solemn organ draws 
 
 The melodies of being, blowing out 
 
 Through all her reeds the indivisible life. 
 
 For as a lily breasted on a lake 
 
 Grows fair from bud to petal, to herself 
 
 The law and reason for her coming forth. 
 
 So flowers existence from the original Soul, 
 
 Albeit she seem but a mysterious shade. 
 
 What lips would be her exorcist and purge 
 
 Away her glorious semblance from the mind ? 
 
 In arms of this divine Illusion rocked. 
 
 The manchild, firstling of the incarnate Soul, 
 
 Makes round his infant cycle, crescent thence 
 
 From type to type of personality. 
 
70 
 
 HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 Behold, a hope is born, a faith perceives, 
 
 Flaming sublime above her confines vast, 
 
 The advent of a purer day, when man 
 
 Will cast no shadow, but a thing of light 
 
 Essential, mingle gently, a clear beam, 
 
 With that which knows no change \ a day when she, 
 
 Her mighty task complete, will be withdrawn, 
 
 Her heart be stilled, her awful altars dimmed, 
 
 Her universal wheels, from which the suns 
 
 Leap up and sparkle till the eons fail. 
 
 Be stayed, and all her multitudinous lamps 
 
 Extinguished, silenced her harmonious choirs. 
 
 And this infinitude, furled like a scroll. 
 
 Depart, and through the shoreless void be rolled 
 
 A calm, majestic, everlasting Sea, 
 
 Life." 
 
 While they mused upon his earnest words. 
 With eyes that singled Vivian, he resumed ; 
 " My son, my heart beats with you. 'T is my hope 
 To see your shackles loosened ere I die. 
 Much would I say that may not now be said. 
 And I would have you first assuage your heart 
 From these cool wells of beauty, hold the palms 
 Of nature for a season in your own. 
 You shall forget the world from which you came, 
 And what it thought or taught or sanctified. 
 Till all the tender faculties be ope 
 To spiritous omens, for a loftier lore 
 Ripe. Tokens from the infinite, fine words, 
 Upon aerial anvils forged, will come 
 From bird and flower. And mirrored in your eye, 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 7 1 
 
 The wide translucency of air, the mild 
 And crystal motions of the bounteous skies, 
 The unfathomable ether and the stars 
 Will be to you a prophecy, a voice 
 Of duty and monition. You shall know 
 The starry throes of ecstacy, your mind 
 Be an angelic clearness, till you scale 
 The shining peaks of holiness and catch 
 The perfect Loveliness that lights the world." 
 
 And Vivian said, " O master, take my heart, 
 
 Shape, temper it to some celestial use, 
 
 And you of all men will I most revere. 
 
 Break up this vaulted darkness and insphere 
 
 A star within me that will never pale. 
 
 Far off the jangled hearts and creeds of men ! 
 
 For I to-day have felt, the mind has seen 
 
 What may not be forgotten. 'T is my faith 
 
 That whoso has with open eyes beheld 
 
 Beauty, the universal light of God, 
 
 And loved her through some hours of passion, he 
 
 Can never wholly fail to what he was. 
 
 O spirit, come from skyey chambers down, 
 
 In full sereneness of that gentle light 
 
 Whereof our lives do suffer poverty. 
 
 Thy smile is on us and our hearts are glad ; 
 
 It passes, and we perish. Elevate 
 
 Thy children that they be not all too low, 
 
 For they are of thee and their thoughts expect 
 
 Thy summons unto higher worlds of faith, 
 
 Thy revelation of diviner grace." 
 
72 
 
 HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 But then the prying sun forced them to hide 
 
 Deep in a fairy dell whose burnished sward 
 
 Titania's bridal slipper might have pressed 
 
 Uncrinkled and untarnished. And therein 
 
 A clarion brook rustled his minted marge, 
 
 Wreathing soft folds of music around plots 
 
 Of sedge and osier. Here two rills were joined 
 
 With laughter and a hoary oak hung out 
 
 A leafy screen to shield their married loves. 
 
 Delicious as the pearly depths that shone 
 
 In Agannippe or cool Hippocrene 
 
 To Hesiod panting from his morning walk, 
 
 Were thy translucent waves, O brook, to them. 
 
 They spake of Alpheus and his Aretheuse, 
 
 Called you more happy, praised the mixing lights 
 
 Of pebbles that veneered your paven floor. 
 
 Agate and turkis, jasper, emerald. 
 
 They prayed the quicks to weave their tasseled arms, 
 
 To knit their tendrils to a trellis cool. 
 
 Above, to save your cheeks from drouthy suns j 
 
 Besought the mountains from their inmost hearts 
 
 And with perennial floods to feed your veins. 
 
 They drank, and laved their eyes and cheeks and 
 
 brows. 
 Charmed from their feet the arrowy aches in baths 
 Of fresh medicinal foam, and lingered long 
 In dalliance with the pert capricious curls 
 Of this arch-wanton, fretted his sweet chime 
 To baby petulance, then fled his ire. 
 Refuged in mimic fortresses whose walls 
 Were overhung with rose-belled honey-suckle, 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 73 
 
 Their domes inlaid with roses. Just o'erhead 
 
 One tiny throat shaped little pearls of song 
 
 And tossed them in their laps to win their grace, 
 
 As one who showers most cunning chivalries 
 
 Upon a stately lady proud in heart, 
 
 Who will not mark them. Until Vivian said, 
 
 " O Paul, you only of us all can frame 
 
 Befitting answer to the gleeful bird. 
 
 I pray you, sound a note or two of rhyme. 
 
 And sing it to her." 
 
 And Paul said, " I would 
 I knew to couch some happy word of thanks 
 In accords which her tender soul might read. 
 But this not I, nor subtlest bard of men. 
 I ween it is the self-same bird that piped 
 One mellow afternoon the while I strolled 
 These glades and made a poem. As it grew, 
 Grew the bird's note in sweetness, keeping tune 
 AVith what I fashioned, and when the last verse 
 Ripened and dropped from where it hung upon 
 The branching fancy, lo, the gentle down 
 Had ceased to tremble on the weary throat. 
 And lifting up the dainty foot and wing, 
 She dipped down yonder odorous aisle to meet 
 Dun twilight stealing inward from the east." 
 
 Then Vivian, " Sing to us the rhyme you made, 
 For sure we will not stir until we hear." 
 And Arthur lifted a loud voice and cried, 
 "The rhyme, the rhyme or nothing, yea the 
 rhyme." 
 
74 
 
 HIGHLAND RAMBLES, 
 
 And Paul leaned backward on the grass and sang 
 Softly in answer to the gleeful bird. 
 
 Pour, pour the quivering streams 
 Of thy liquid mirth around us, 
 Kindle us with thy strong passion 
 Ere the vesper chill hath found us j 
 Fling, fling in kingly fashion 
 All the largess of thy dreams. 
 Lo, the sweet eye-floods are dashing 
 Hither from the solar fountain, 
 Soar, soar, and in the brightness 
 Steep the soft plumes of thy lightness ; 
 Roll thy rounded harmonies. 
 Weave thy wildest minstrelsies. 
 Till the throbbing of thy gladness 
 Tune the earth and touch the skies, 
 And the woodland, mead and mountain 
 Sing and dance in answering madness. 
 
 What unknown fount of melody. 
 
 What secret soul of piety 
 
 Supplies the trembling of thy throat 
 
 With the fashion of its note ? 
 
 To what high haunt of glee 
 
 Is access granted thee ? 
 
 What cunning alchemy of speech 
 
 Can guess the mixing of thy sweet ? 
 
 What fine geometry can teach 
 
 Thy mystic privilege to mete ? 
 
 Wondrously thy thread is spun 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 75 
 
 From grain of rock, from waves of motion, 
 
 And somehow thy voice is one 
 
 With wail of wind and boom of ocean. 
 
 Thou bringest from the infinite 
 
 Under thy wings a message of light, 
 
 Could we but solve thy oracle 
 
 By spell or charm or miracle. 
 
 What doth ail thy note, strange spirit ? 
 
 Fails it from thy deep desire ? 
 
 Doth it flutter, pause and languish 
 
 From an inner strain of anguish, 
 
 That v/ould crush and overbear it ? 
 
 O wherefore load the crystal air 
 
 With pleadings so impassionate, 
 
 Who taught thee failings of despair, 
 
 Or bade thee murmur at thy fate ? 
 
 Can thy fancy guess a higher 
 
 Than the bough where hangs thine aerie, 
 
 Or the cloud whose amethyst 
 
 Tangles thy plumes in webs of mist. 
 
 Till thy sprite is dark and weary ? 
 
 But as thou singest, such am I. 
 
 For what it means I cannot tell ; 
 
 A sorrow and an ecstasy, 
 
 A sigh of some strange melody 
 
 That floats and dies and all is well ; 
 
 A fragment of the eternal Love 
 
 That chants around us and above, 
 
 That waves celestial pinions o'er us, 
 
 And sounds the trump of hope before us. 
 
76 HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 Quitting these genial boughs they homeward strolled 
 The bosom of a valley deep embowered 
 'Twixt guardian lengths of mountain, to itself 
 Shut in from prospect of the neighboring world, 
 Save where the cliffs that closed at either term 
 Left windows for the sun's first orient beam 
 And his last lingering glances from the west. 
 Wrapt in a summer mantle all of green, 
 Stirred here and there in little folds, she seemed 
 A baby princess stolen by monstrous elves, 
 Who while they bore her from her father's courts 
 Slept smxiling in their arms. Her wood- haunts wild 
 Had lured young Aphrodite scarce to miss 
 Her Paphian bowers, nor wooed Arcadian pipes 
 With pastoral warblings more soft-breathing slopes, 
 Or lawns more soothing sweet. The nestled cot 
 From under flowery thatches peeped and laughed, 
 Round which the frolic brood of children danced 
 Like nursling robins fluttering nigh their nest. 
 Midmost within this garden of delight 
 They chanced upon a mansion quaintly built, 
 Rusted with years ; a mossy roof engrailed 
 With antique gables ; twilight porches gloomed 
 From brows down which the innumerable rose 
 Flooded the torrent blossom in full blush ; 
 An orchard here, and there a liberal square 
 Of garden, scored with tottering trellises 
 O'er which the lush vine loosed her leafy hair ; 
 A hedge of prickly stems, where of all hues 
 The mixing berries matched their rival charms j 
 And full in front a lav/n, in merest slope 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES. yy 
 
 Descending, spread her mats of green, o'erboughed 
 
 By altitudes of vast centurial elms. 
 
 " Here oft I came," the Master said, " in days 
 On which the aged heart more fondly dotes 
 Than years that followed after, to pursue 
 Juvenile pranks and games among the trees. 
 Then all was brighter, things were not so grey ; 
 And everywhere you met a graceful hand 
 Of neatness. Here four stalwart striplings throve, 
 And spurned the sward with steps as light and sure 
 As the wild stag that roved our borders then. 
 The father, given to science and the books, 
 Helped on by native aptitudes in all. 
 Drew them to learning with so light a hand 
 They hardly felt the stress or fought with it. 
 But all were diverse. Burke I never loved, 
 The eldest, hardest, all his words compact 
 Of arrogance and the affirming clink. 
 The vaguest topic broached, he lifted up 
 A front of contradiction harsh and bold. 
 The thing was never told till he had hacked 
 Some gashes in it, carved on it his mark. 
 Or smoothed it with a last complacent touch. 
 But well he could support at airy poise, 
 Move in swift circle, point in quarte and tierce 
 The dialectic blade, which he knew well 
 To burnish at his leisure. Riper grown, 
 He chose the metaphysics and equipped 
 With such assiduous, comprehending thoughts 
 His mind v/ith all the weapons of his art, 
 
^8 HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 So shone with wisdom, as a tree that flares 
 
 A million icy spangles in the sun, 
 
 They sought him to adorn some famous chair 
 
 Where meek-browed scholars flocked with looks of 
 
 awe. 
 Placid o'er vulgar hopes and fears, his brow 
 Not passion nor sweet sympathy could mar. 
 Buoyed upon eagle wings he compassed all 
 The lesser heavens and the round of time. 
 With necromantic wand well-armed, he oped 
 Secretest world-deeps by abstruse command ; 
 Guessed all the mundane riddles dark and fine j 
 Systems, beliefs, primordial mysteries 
 Were clear as noonday to him. He untied 
 Gordian subtleties and reconciled 
 By logic things deemed paradoxical. 
 By luminous esoteric methods grand 
 He spelled the universal plan, and clothed 
 In spotless pedantry, mooted the things 
 Of destiny. Think not that thus from hate 
 I paint him with derision, or from scorn 
 Of knowledge at her amplest, but with aims 
 Of warning to you, lest your hearts be mocked 
 By masters m.astered by the thing they know, 
 Mouthing the chaff of time. O wherefore fly 
 Afar to find the temple-steps of God? 
 Ascend the fiery meteor, with him wheel 
 Aloft through all his giant period 
 Abysmal, visit each sublime abode 
 Stellar or solar, but the quest is vain. 
 He finds the most who wisely waits at home. 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 79 
 
 Your spirit, it is fate j your love the star 
 
 For which you course the arcs of heaven in vain. 
 
 " Next younger WilHs, whom I might have loved, 
 More pitied as too dilettante, slight, 
 Unpolarized to any scheme or hope. 
 Sipping of many founts he drank of none, 
 Though leaning most to art. Too weak to get, 
 He scorned to keep, but having, all his soul 
 Was largess,^ largess. Darling v/ith his mates, 
 Boon, placable and guileless, if he slipped, 
 'T was frailty and not choice. Gay in his mood. 
 Winning in mien and in his manners bland, 
 He charmed all hearts with gentlest courtesies, 
 Yet, in the deeper lore of friendship, poor. 
 Graced with a dallying wit, a warbling laugh, 
 His buoyance never drooped from sun to sun. 
 The tempest could not break him, for he spread 
 His wings upon its breath and with it sailed. 
 Not daring tasks of weight, he better loved 
 Dainty, fantastic, fine dexterities, 
 Would mimic, touch the flute or sound the harp. 
 Strike out a lyric, sketch a random scene. 
 Or woo perchance a higher Muse and teach 
 The canvass to repeat a favorite mood. 
 Nature in him failed in the summing force 
 Organic and the law of unity. 
 So was his life shorn of its lawful scope 
 By that which seemed its glory. 
 
 " And the third 
 Was Percy, ghttering like a beauteous pard 
 
8o HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 Fresh from his Afric jungle, not half weaned 
 
 From his fierce gambol. He by word and deed 
 
 Published to men so cunningly what he was, 
 
 That few conceived the reason, though all felt 
 
 The charm. In some Olympic game all eyes 
 
 Had followed him, as trifling with the rein, 
 
 Careless of winning, and the thing he did ; 
 
 Easily foremost when his heart was stirred. 
 
 Noble in power, daring in his thought, 
 
 And of imagination most intense. 
 
 He toyed with knowledge as a winsome babe. 
 
 He heard some native thunders in his soul 
 
 Of a melody so deep that a fierce scorn 
 
 Grew in him for the little race of men 
 
 Bartering their hearts for dust. But wild and strong 
 
 Another music fell upon his ear, 
 
 Not falling from the amber peaks of heaven, 
 
 But steaming balefully from underground. 
 
 To fulsome and imperious bursts it swelled, 
 
 Printing its thousand motions on his sense, 
 
 Sweetly soliciting his lighter moods, 
 
 Till all his soul was mellowed to its power, 
 
 And to its dread intent his mind inclined. 
 
 And to its maze and interchange of strains 
 
 His feet were given in a mysterious dance. 
 
 And he fell into darkness and was lost ; 
 
 Drifting upon the shoulders of the sea 
 
 As a lone ship whose pilot drops asleep. 
 
 Steering nigh poppied banks of strange sea-isle, 
 
 While all the heavens are low and without star. 
 
 And partly to disburden his dark mind 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 8 1 
 
 From a corroding inner sense of ill, 
 
 Maddened by hissings of the feathered shaft 
 
 Of slander, part, in that he could not bow 
 
 To studious leisure, commerce with the books, 
 
 Or silken prattle of the gay saloon, 
 
 He roamed from clime to clime o'er half the world, 
 
 Mingled with novel faces, alien hearts. 
 
 And helped the Grecian sword against the Turk, 
 
 Struck with the Druse for cedarn Lebanon, 
 
 And after many years came home to die. 
 
 All his great heart in ashes. Woe to him, 
 
 Who, coasting round ideal havens, casts 
 
 No anchor, but with wistful gaze looks back 
 
 Across the perilous deeps he sailed with toil, 
 
 Perusing his white wake with doubtful eyes. 
 
 For him the tempest lurks, him the abyss 
 
 Shall strangle in remorseless arms. 
 
 "The fourth, 
 Youngest and fairest of the brood, was Ralph, 
 The gentlest spirit, nearest to divine, 
 Sweetliest tuned to all melodious things 
 Of the few souls that have been dear to me. 
 His manhood, luminous with pearly light, 
 Shone out as mild as Plato and as grand. 
 A full-orbed pha ntasy with chastened ray 
 Mantled with a perpetual poesy 
 The earnest speech his reason loved to plan. 
 On so much falling off you might insist 
 As in Love's star wavering through dewy air, 
 Or smiling hill-tops quivering through haze. 
 So much he seemed to falter from the sure 
 
82 HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 Unswerving circle. So much from his act, 
 
 Perchance, of faultless evenness was missed. 
 
 This was the earthly rustling of her robe 
 
 That seemed the error of his soul. He had 
 
 His perfect splendor here, if any have. 
 
 The whispering wind yielded him holy stuff 
 
 To weave into his being and the brooks 
 
 With mystic voices told him deeper things 
 
 Than bard or prophet knows. He sought his own, 
 
 And faltered not, nor was content with less, 
 
 Nor measured by the canons of the sense 
 
 The aerial scope he had, nor sought of all 
 
 His heavenly toil a mortal recompense. 
 
 But to the larger sequence, wise to keep 
 
 His ever widening purpose aimed, he stooped 
 
 To no inferior amity, but wooed 
 
 Beauty in her own home. Yet he is fled, 
 
 And all are fled, and I alone abide 
 
 To wander like a ghost among the fresh 
 
 And blooming generations, but not long ; 
 
 I am grown prescient of an end not far." 
 
 While thus he span the thread of character, 
 They passed the western gorge and clomb a hill 
 Smooth-verdured, to whose foot the village stretched 
 A snowy hand to pluck the plenteous fruits. 
 The summer yielding of the land. Its crest 
 Murmured with lofty oaks that spread old arms 
 Of benediction over a neat cot 
 Enringed with lilac. Mounting they beheld. 
 Within a rose-plot, Edith, whose sweet smiles 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES. ^2, 
 
 Long since had thieved the passionate heart of Paul. 
 
 She propped a pale tube-rose whose fragile grace 
 
 Too eager winds had clasped ; her piteous eye 
 
 Quickened the pulses in its stem, her breath 
 
 Doubled the ripening fragrance of the bud. 
 
 O, who could paint her as she seemed to him ! 
 
 Ah, to his eye the roses' wealth of hue 
 
 Was shamed by that one rose upon her cheek. 
 
 The spirit of the summer filled her eyes. 
 
 Deep fountains of a mild and dewy light : 
 
 Twin buds that sleep, half opened, cheek to cheek, 
 
 Were those soft-glowing lips, and round her chin 
 
 Gathered the subtly curving lines of grace 
 
 That mould and plump a taper pear. He thought 
 
 The lily-rose less graceful from its stalk 
 
 Than from the snowy arching of her neck. 
 
 The splendor of her head. But he not typed 
 
 By other loveliness the mystic swell 
 
 Of the rich bosom, musically heaved. 
 
 Nor the sunlight of smiles that wont to haunt 
 
 The sporting dimples of her faultless hand. 
 
 O not the fiery radiance of the night. 
 
 Sole-lighted by the eager-bosomed stars, 
 
 But hers that gentle fairness when the moon, 
 
 Crescent, makes mild the heavens with a serene 
 
 And planet-tempering beam. 
 
 She came with smiles 
 Of sweetest welcome, guiding them to taste 
 The cordial shadows of the oaks that swarmed 
 Like hiving bees through all their foliage. 
 And then appeared the mother with a cheek 
 
84 HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 Whose ripe and mellow autumn glow the frosts 
 
 Began to wither, and a brow now blown 
 
 To silver ripples by harsh winds of the world. 
 
 In thickest shade she spread the cloth and brought, 
 
 From privy cache or larder cool, the milk, 
 
 Fresh loaves and edged with curls of crispy crust, 
 
 Within, of snowy grain and tenderest comb. 
 
 But Paul, untouched by thirst or famine, strolled 
 
 Through nooks of gentian, jasmine, mignonnette, 
 
 Musing of Edith. Oft in balmy June 
 
 He traversed by her side the woods and glens. 
 
 Spying the plants in nice botanic quest. 
 
 And never flower so perilous in its perch, 
 
 Far out upon the arms of giant pine. 
 
 Or on the forehead of o'erbeetling crag. 
 
 Or floating midmost in rank-breathing marsh, 
 
 But he, with light or bold devising hands, 
 
 Would pluck it from its proud security. 
 
 And so through natural channels of approach, 
 
 The mountain myth, the woodland song, the book, 
 
 Debatings over order or cohort, 
 
 Or passing interchange of thought and wit. 
 
 Or ponderings of the riper intellect. 
 
 Stole up dear hours of closer confidence. 
 
 And bringing in their hands the buds of love. 
 
 By happy instinct lured he pushed his walk 
 
 Far past the garden as in twenty strokes 
 
 Of his lithe wings a robin glides, and heard 
 
 The silver patter of a spring, coy-couched 
 
 Mid coiling roots and fretty rocks, that shook 
 
 The crystal banner of a waterfall 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 85 
 
 To tempt the mowers from the sultry swath. 
 Lo, on its brink the form of her he sought, 
 Kneeling beside the pail she came to fill. 
 Handling with aimless touch the cocoa-shell 
 Worn smooth by contact with the lips of men, 
 She watched the cradled slumber of the pool. 
 While some delightful fancy from her shape 
 Beguiled its animation, so reposing 
 Gently upon itself with naiad grace. 
 And Paul, partly unriddling her sweet mood. 
 Paused, and with fond and reverent looks of love 
 Explored her flowing mould of artless art. 
 Did she but lightly stir, he could behold 
 A hundred radiant graces glance and fade. 
 Chasing themselves around the arm and neck 
 And shoulder, till they melted into rest. 
 Love-bold, he stole on slow unspeaking steps 
 Across the soundless velvet of the sward 
 And caught within the fount her drooping face ; 
 A rose full-blossomed that upon its spray 
 Stoops from the burthen of a fragrant heart. 
 Eyelids, declining low, veiled from her ken 
 The face of him who could not choose but smile 
 From utter admiration and delight. 
 " Lo, the one vision of my life, the soul 
 Of Beauty which my love has wooed in dreams." 
 
 Whereat keen-startled, up she rose with eyes 
 Brimming with sweet bewilderment and fear, 
 And all the crimson eddies ceased to haunt 
 The frighted cheek only to come again 
 
86 HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 With a redoubled and beseeching fairness. 
 
 But Paul flowed on as though he marked it not, 
 
 " I cannot help but fancy that the spring, 
 
 Divinely urged to incarnate anew 
 
 Her spirit to its full degree of grace, 
 
 Would find these features faultless to her mind. 
 
 And should some mythic metamorphosis 
 
 Befall yourself, I ween no fairer type 
 
 Would offer than this covert fountain, rich 
 
 Through all his lucid deeps with tranquil joy. 
 
 Your pardon, lady, that without your leave 
 
 I put to flight what seemed a happy dream, 
 
 But something stronger than I could gainsay 
 
 Ruled in my feet. I guess the God was Love. 
 
 Fair women blossom under every sky. 
 
 But, Edith, none so fair as under yours. 
 
 This mountain air contains some quality 
 
 That deepens all the sunlight in the soul. 
 
 Another sun renews the day-spring, change 
 
 Is wrought into the twilight and the stars 
 
 Have other glances. Through the enchanted land 
 
 A wondrous presence meets me as I move, 
 
 A dignity, a gladness and a grace, 
 
 A kind of music very calm and bland. 
 
 Lining the world with golden blandishment. 
 
 Yea, and this inner life of mine is stirred 
 
 By knowledge of some late descended power, 
 
 And shakes my pulses with melodious noise. 
 
 And who this mighty sorcerer may be, 
 
 I cannot fathom, if he be not Love." 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 As some light cloud that wanders nigh the dawn 
 
 Changes from rose to pink, from pink to white, 
 
 Then quickly mounts again the scale of hues, 
 
 So changed her cheek beneath his earnest parle 
 
 And eyes wherein the solemn light of love 
 
 Intensely dwelt. But whether from a heart 
 
 Not all instructed in its own desire, 
 
 Or partly doubting if his words were feigned, 
 
 Perchance a pettish unextinguished spark, 
 
 Because he caught her while she mused of him, 
 
 Howbeit, her answer seemed to come from scorn. 
 
 " O sir, this is a stately compliment, 
 
 Wrought, as I guess, on dreamy college-lawns 
 
 When you discoursed in Roman sentences. 
 
 I pray you, weave not with such careful hands 
 
 The color and the woof of flattery. 
 
 My ears are rustic to these harmonies. 
 
 But yet, I thank you, lest your heart be vexed. 
 
 I know that often scholars from the town 
 
 Assume the cavalier and grow enamored 
 
 Of some fair Pastorella of the vale. 
 
 Doubtless it turns an after boast or two 
 
 When jocund comrades marshall their exploits." 
 
 But when she marked the pain within his eyes, 
 
 " Forgive me, Paul, I would not do you wrong. 
 
 I have believed you nobler." 
 
 Clearer then 
 Shone out his starry passion, and he said. 
 Cleaving her transient cloud of skepticism, 
 " Ah, all unjust to turn to passing jest 
 Words flowering on the very stalk of love. 
 
 87 
 
88 HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 It was my creed no woman breathed so fair 
 To charm my liking with this gentle ease. 
 O trust me, Edith, that my love is great. 
 
 trust me as a kind of rude completion, 
 The ambient and protecting husk wherein 
 Your tender ear may fill its golden glow, 
 Or a firm roof to fend perplexing gusts. 
 Trust in me, for I hold you as a saint, 
 Whom I would worship with best piety." 
 
 And a mild light of meekness on his face, 
 And passion-thrilling supplicating tones. 
 And memory, haply, of her bitter words 
 Smote her with quick contrition and the tears 
 Stole out upon the margins of her eyes ; 
 While musical and low the plaintive voice, 
 Woven with merest tremblings, answered him, 
 " O Paul, I little merit to be loved, 
 Interpreting with such ungracious eyes 
 The gift you proffer. But your heart is great, 
 Too great to parley with my idle spleen. 
 And if you find a worth in one like me. 
 So poor in brilliance, poor in all but love 
 And fond forecastings of an upward mind. 
 That would commeasure with you noble ends, 
 Lo, I will follow you through all the earth. 
 And if I cannot love you as I* ought, 
 
 1 will forever love you as I can." 
 
 Thus clear from her deep-fountained womanhood 
 Murmured the crystal wave of answering love. 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 89 
 
 And the transcendent flicker of a light, 
 Not born from any sun or star that shines, 
 Gleamed o'er the bowed and waiting face of Paul. 
 And he caught up her dimpled palm that nigh 
 For softness melted in his grasp and said, 
 *' O Love, look up. Behold heaven's star of Love 
 Steals into being from the evening splendor, 
 Twin-born with ours ; our chosen pilot-star. 
 And when his form is hidden in the skies, 
 We '11 find his perfect image in our hearts." 
 
 O rose and matchless fragrance of all hours, 
 When Love salutes us from a maiden's eyes. 
 And magic instincts stir and the young heart 
 Gushes in song ! O golden sum of all. 
 When two clear billows on the sea of Beauty, 
 Moved upon diverse but symmetric tides. 
 Break to each other o'er the rocky bars 
 Of personality, and, blending, bloom 
 Upward in a white foam of spotless passion ! 
 Yet this is Love, the mystic elf, quick-born 
 Upon the tremulous bosom of a sigh, 
 A gleam, a glow, a fine and flitting pinion, 
 A liquid rhyme or young Titania's dream. 
 But lovers must aye purge their mortal selves. 
 Making their breasts clear shrines of crystalline, 
 That Beauty, from her lodge in either soul 
 Peeping, may quickly know herself and yearn 
 For that old oneness ere the man was framed. 
 The lovers are the chosen, unto them 
 The incommunicable is revealed. 
 
9© HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 Crisp brooks that wed in some Arcadian dell, 
 Paired throbbings of two happy throats in June, 
 Bright tints of morn that gently blend to one, 
 Marriage of sweetest sound with silentness, 
 These, these be lovers' spirits when they meet. 
 
 Paul filled the empty pail and they moved forth 
 
 Together, conning o'er in fragrant talk 
 
 The secret tale of love in either breast. 
 
 The thrillings of those precious pains and all 
 
 Delicious agonies that lovers know. 
 
 And passing down the garden-walk they found 
 
 Blossom and bud closing to tranquil dreams, 
 
 And one lone bee late-lingering at the rose. 
 
 They sought the oaks under whose sheltering boughs 
 
 The chatting throng were grouped on twisted chairs 
 
 In circle round the patriarchal sire. 
 
 And by him sat the son, easing his limbs 
 
 From labored furrows of the cloven grain. 
 
 Then as the evening fell, the Father raised 
 
 Their souls with meditative discourse mild, 
 
 And touching upon the advent of his death. 
 
 And all were charmed by a lone flageolet. 
 
 Tuned by some mournful villager, that seemed. 
 
 Unto pathetic fancies warbling low. 
 
 The burthen of the twilight hour wept down 
 
 In liquid melodies. Long time it moved 
 
 Through soft imploring passionate desires. 
 
 Then flung its whole heart upward into heaven 
 
 In one wild surge of agony, and then 
 
 Fell down through cadences of deep despair 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 91 
 
 To fondle a serene regret and blend 
 
 Softly and softlier with the twilight hush. 
 
 All eyes were filled with tears, and, touched in soul, 
 
 They sat and watched the moon through plaited 
 
 boughs 
 Spangle the sward with silver, leafy heights 
 Twinkle with fire-flies voyaging the night 
 With lamps that ever needed to be trimmed, 
 And spied careering bats carve on the sky 
 Their fitful lines, the while through all his stems 
 The broad catalpa nodded to the sound 
 Of cricket lullabies. From silver mists 
 That crept like luminous serpents down the vales, 
 The lonely ov/let shot his clear too-whit, 
 And not the faintest murmur of a breeze 
 Disturbed the folded eyelids of the flower. 
 But over ail, the mild and wide abyss 
 Of nature's motion and great silentness 
 Deepened in beauty and far in the north 
 The fiery shuttles, weaving up the night, 
 With sudden magic clothed the half of heaven 
 In robes of crimson, purple and of gold. 
 
92 HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 IV. 
 
 When his downy sleep has ending, 
 Finds the wildered youngling there 
 No sweet presence o'er him bending, 
 Flower nor brook nor arbor fair. 
 Weird enchantment of a night, 
 Vanished is the semblance bright. 
 But above him breaks a light ; 
 Voiceless, shapeless, save a hand 
 Beckoning with august command. 
 Divine in clearness and severe. 
 Skyward it mounts in starry error ; 
 But he has no sense of fear, 
 And he loves it for its terror. 
 From him burgeon wings aerial, 
 Beat melodiously the breeze, 
 And he cleaves the far ethereal 
 Ocean v^^ith angelic ease, 
 Following that sign imperial. 
 
 Pompous rites not celebrate 
 Secret birthday of the soul, 
 When the first warm flush of fate 
 Crimsons her terrestrial feature, 
 And the waves of godhood roll 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 93 
 
 Gently round her mortal nature. 
 Only silence has perceived it, 
 Only God in heaven believed it. 
 
 But this dawning is the seal 
 Of her greatness, chosen thence 
 Child of Beauty. She shall feel 
 Nevermore the throes of sense, 
 But sweet pulses out of heaven 
 Shake her heart with motions even. 
 Though the laws and cycles sure 
 Fade like mist, she will endure. 
 For above the thunder-hum 
 Where hiving planets go and come. 
 Greater than the incarnate whole. 
 Lives and loves the Eternal Soul. 
 
 By the reluctant paces of a stream, 
 
 Just where a recluse grove of willow loosed 
 
 Her lavish braids in golden cataract. 
 
 The wanderers, slanting from the tingling meads, 
 
 Flung down their drowsy limbs and drank the cool. 
 
 And here a church kept sanctuary dim. 
 
 All breathed with age and unresisted mould. 
 
 And lawn and walk betrayed neglectful hands. 
 
 The massy palings warped or fallen askance 
 
 From nails rust-eaten, from their sockets slipt, 
 
 Or spurned by myriad feet of heedless winds, 
 
 Tempted the roving steer's besieging horn 
 
 To force admittance to the solemn shades 
 
94 
 
 HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 And sacred pastures. And the temple rose 
 Compact in front and flank of dusky stones, 
 Whose swarthy cheeks, untamed by chisel, wore 
 With rugged pride their native mountain lines, 
 Or patched their scars with tattered breadths of moss. 
 Around the porch thick wefts of ivy clung. 
 From which a hundred tendrils, shooting, caught 
 The fretty eaves or up the gable glanced, 
 And peeped and dangled, and one spray of mind 
 More daring, scaled the summit of the cross, 
 And seemed to drag it somewhat from its perch, 
 Albeit it only toppled from its age. 
 Perusing the dark pile, the Master said : 
 
 " Even to the dawning eye of infancy 
 
 These battered walls seemed old and grey as now. 
 
 Dear is the memory of sweet Sabbath morns, 
 
 When, guided by the godly mother's hand, 
 
 I entered here and heard the shepherd warn 
 
 His simple flock, and mete with lowly hands 
 
 The ministration of the word divine. 
 
 Here the first pencil of supernal light 
 
 Played out of heaven upon my spirit, here 
 
 Took root within me the prime germ of all 
 
 That best my heart has since achieved. O blest, 
 
 Forever blest the shining hands of Her, 
 
 Great mother of a noble Titan brood. 
 
 Whose mild paps fed us ere the mind was ripe 
 
 To measure its desire ! Ah, now her voice 
 
 Fails from its melody, and her deep eyes, 
 
 Fountains of mourning, wander through all heavens 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 95 
 
 In hopeless imploration j Niobe 
 
 Beseeching for her children, whom no more 
 
 Her great heart will caress. In after youth 
 
 Some doubts, engendered in a lonely hour 
 
 Of meditation, hunted me like wolves. 
 
 And smit with agony by day and night 
 
 I wooed the solitude of yonder hills 
 
 Until my times were finished and the soul 
 
 Was purged of darkness. But my mother wept. 
 
 She held it for a fearful sin and wept. 
 
 And with moist eyes of prayer she drew me where 
 
 Her wisdom had its fountains, and her faith, 
 
 The pulpit. Here a noisy pulpiteer 
 
 Made havoc, and we heard the sacred themes 
 
 Parceled by theologic rule, with heights. 
 
 Compact of morticed logic, embattailed ; 
 
 Words rich in gleaming sallies, hot descents, 
 
 Keen arrow-flights transpiercing in their swoop 
 
 Hostility and every creed that blew 
 
 A trumpet and durst smite his rounded walls. 
 
 But I, imploring bread, received a stone. 
 
 Ah, when will one be found of worthy speech, 
 
 Unfolding the eternal word with fear. 
 
 Not adding and not dwarfing, reverent ! 
 
 The time is sick at heart with vacant talk. 
 
 Wisdom takes perch upon the lips and thence 
 
 Fulmines, not knowing of the deeper soul. 
 
 The prophet is the speaker of the Word. 
 
 He bends his ear close to the whispering lips 
 
 Of nature and in holy melodies 
 
 Sings to the world the secrets she imparts. 
 
96 HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 Heavenborn ! we welcome thee with love and joy, 
 To whom the Great God has revealed himself. " 
 
 And Vivian said, " More than Crotona old 
 Or Sais, or the lips of Pythia, 
 These wood-haunts promise to my thirsting mind. 
 For often under other skies than these, 
 Watching at eve some faintest star increase 
 From throb to throb its beauty till it shone 
 Naked, complete, the master of its course. 
 The weary heart would yearn for some great Seer, 
 A teacher who would plume my soul to mount 
 High past the turbid ether and alight 
 Upon the golden rind of some fair world, 
 A truth immortal as the star I saw. 
 In you my sigh is granted. While you speak 
 My mood is lightened. O speak on, for I, 
 More dutiful than Plato at the feet 
 Of him who greatly slighted to be great, 
 Attend. I hang upon your tale of her. 
 This hoary mother of the centuries. 
 Herself a suckling from the mighty breast 
 Of that world-nurse, the Orient, old and grand." 
 Whereto the reverent Master made reply ; 
 " Think not I would say aught in trivial scorn, 
 The foam of hearts not certain of themselves. 
 Of her who nourished me. I rather keep 
 A veneration. And her potent hands. 
 Her sovereign eyes and most resplendent brow, 
 Her world-embracing purposes and deeds 
 Lay hold upon me. Into purer types 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES, 
 
 97 
 
 From age to age ascending, she fulfils 
 
 Alway an ampler duty. Often soiled 
 
 O'er all her glorious features with the mire 
 
 Of worldliness, and many times eclipsed 
 
 By thunder-darkened tempests from her prime 
 
 Sweet sanctity of adoration, lo, 
 
 She has from error still reclaimed her feet 
 
 And taken a new brightness. But behold, 
 
 Her much-supporting knees do crumble ; all 
 
 Her offices grow languid in the pulse. 
 
 No more for her the courts of heaven, no more 
 
 The master-sway of mightiest emperies. 
 
 A greater far than she rises to snatch 
 
 The falling sceptre. Exiled long, he comes, 
 
 Young Jove, full-grown upon the secret sweets 
 
 Of Ida, and the feeble dynasties 
 
 Shake to his footing. The young soul of man, 
 
 No longer abject, cowering far from sight, 
 
 Puts on the gleaming armor of assault, 
 
 And summoning those proud powers, which he rules, 
 
 Moves to his realm of Beauty. Unto all 
 
 New hope is added. This humanity, 
 
 That might spread sail upon eternal seas, 
 
 A long time stranded on the shores of Time, 
 
 And like a wounded sea-bird wildly wailing. 
 
 Far-peering in the dim abysses, cried 
 
 For God. For her no comfort could be found. 
 
 But now the Ideal, fluttering past her eyes 
 
 On white-winged light divine, renews again 
 
 Her spirit. She will knit the sundered beams 
 
 And trim her masts, taking for pilot one 
 
98 HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 Who finds his star within him, inly urged 
 
 By bold creative insight self-sustained. 
 
 Restored to kinship of the elder gods, 
 
 No more she plies the supple knee, the fool 
 
 Of mortal doctrine, sold to symbols, once 
 
 Meet poesy of largest utterance, 
 
 Now vacant of their beauty, being misused \ 
 
 From hintings of an arduous piety 
 
 Degenerate to civic uses grown, 
 
 And tricked in gauds, wooing the childish eye. 
 
 But nay, we wrong not beauty anywhere. 
 
 Within her folds yet linger noble hearts, 
 
 Not all oblivious of the trust they bear. 
 
 Like fragrant gardens sown in withered lands, 
 
 Or cool-veined fountains amid torrid wastes. 
 
 Nursing a hermit verdure, is this true 
 
 And spotless brotherhood of God, who strive 
 
 To sweeten a sour age with holy lives." 
 
 And Paul said, "O let come the riper day ! 
 Great dawn, uplift with speed your awful head. 
 Pour forth your crimson seas ! A few, with eyes 
 Of worship, watch the slowly orbing hour. 
 What though the world with blindness reels ! O yet 
 A hundred Phosphors call you from your bed. 
 Dear queen Aurora ! For your eyes we thirst. 
 O touch the hills with glory, come and crown 
 The deeps with warming blush and bathe in fire 
 The valleys whence the night lifts slowly ! Come, 
 Another race will greet you, other hopes." 
 
 The Sire smiled on him as he made response. 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 99 
 
 " Young spirits nurse the buds of fairest schemes. 
 
 Yet be not too enamored of your wish, 
 
 Nor limn too generously with glorious traits 
 
 The coming time, lest adverse omens taint 
 
 With bitterness the sweetness of the heart. 
 
 I praise the man whose eye has well discerned 
 
 The majesty and the transcendent worth 
 
 Of the Necessity which pilots all. 
 
 The weak are ground to powder by his feet, 
 
 But the bold-hearted are his darling sons. 
 
 Love well the great Necessity, on him 
 
 Pillowed in love, the soul as gently sleeps 
 
 As babe in cradle. Much we trust will come. 
 
 Enough to catch the moments as they fall 
 
 And speak the truth revealed from hour to hour. 
 
 Not ours to lightly mock the bruited past, 
 
 From whom the thought is fledged and taught to soar, 
 
 But rest firm-grounded on the present, still 
 
 Our door ajar to tempt the future in. 
 
 O not the trump of war, nor statutes forged 
 
 Upon the anvil of authority 
 
 By haughty guardians of the common-weal, 
 
 So teach the world to dare the forward track, 
 
 As the pure voices of her noble sons. 
 
 Who, moving far before her up the heights. 
 
 Summon her on with those melodious peals, 
 
 Resistless in their sweetness. Oft, in sooth, 
 
 The song is more fulfilling than the law." 
 
 Then Arthur slipped a wave that chafed his heart. 
 " Reformers east, reformers west, to south 
 
lOO HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 Reformers. O my Paul, I love you well. 
 
 But wiser, I opine, the enginry 
 
 Of staidest wont, of firm-set church and state, 
 
 Contentious sect, or caucus in the dark, 
 
 Than roseate eras you invoke to turn 
 
 All topsy-turvy this fine house of cards. 
 
 I rather cry with him who in his tower 
 
 Shuffled the vv^orld in quartoze or capot, 
 
 ^Que scais-Je,' see -saw with truth from morn to eve, 
 
 Than split these steadfast bergs and drift their floes 
 
 By mole and pier with ruin. Do you wince ? 
 
 I would conserve. Firm ground is dear to feet 
 
 That will stand sure. But you pull down the hills 
 
 And leave us painted clouds, raze battlement 
 
 And tower to build fantastic shapes of air. 
 
 Yet speak, my Thalaba, what recompense, 
 
 What law to guide, when all this change is wrought ? 
 
 " Love," echoed Paul, with eyes that burned like 
 
 stars, 
 " Love, stronger than your civic bolts and bars. 
 Love, wiser than your banded Israel, 
 Full Love, and templed in the breasts of all. 
 Is this too far, too arduous ? O hush ! 
 Hast sounded all the height and depth of the soul ? 
 Hast weighed it in the hollow of the hand ? 
 Take heed, the ground is holy where you tread I 
 All hear the wind, the earthquake and the fire. 
 Fewest the voice, still, small." 
 
 And Vivian said, 
 " Each has his faith in man, but diverse. I 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES. joi 
 
 Have this creed yet to fashion. I have heard 
 Alway the voice of pity sound his dirge j 
 Swart wen upon creation ; the sole shaft 
 From all God's quiver that has missed its aim." 
 
 Then spake the Master, his benignant face 
 
 A little kindled from its wonted calm, 
 
 " Great bards, their wings upon immortal themes 
 
 Loftily buoyed, have compassed heaven and earth 
 
 To gather golden stuff from which to weave 
 
 Proud eyries on the highest peaks of song. 
 
 Their ears, low-couched, have caught with breathless 
 
 awe 
 The stately whisper of an elder day, 
 Or their prophetic hands have sought to mould 
 The hours with which the present hour is big. 
 Men they have fashioned, heroes to their minds, 
 Forgers of fate, masters from their first breath. 
 Fierce hearts and smoking swords and maths of death : 
 Or, lured by gentler fancies, have passed through 
 The worlds of faery, seats of vanished gods, 
 Plucking a wisdom from abandoned mines. 
 Shaping their path by glowworms in the dusk, 
 Or stars of song in mythic twilight hung. 
 And they have cleft hell open to the core 
 And watched her black heart pulsate without guise j 
 Or, past the utmost zenith shooting, turned 
 The pearly portal on harmonious hinge, 
 Paced up and down the heavenly aisles and heard 
 Symphonious bursts, a million strains commingled. 
 But who with fond imagination, love 
 
102 HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 Unutterable and fearless thought sublime, 
 
 Has sung your greatness from a burthened heart, 
 
 Dear child of wonder, darling of the sphere, 
 
 Majestically lifting your white brows 
 
 Betwixt the morning and the evening star ? 
 
 The most have partly wronged you, meting out 
 
 A niggard honor, more your shame than praise. 
 
 For whence shall hope be drawn but from within ? 
 
 Or who will base his logic for man's worth 
 
 On other than his freedom and intense 
 
 Endeavor that persists unto the end ? 
 
 Humanity, decrepit in the will. 
 
 Leans forward, blindly groping for a prop. 
 
 Faithless that the great soul is all in all. 
 
 Yourself unto yourself are infinite, 
 
 Or else are nothing. Wherefore weakly heed 
 
 Dissonant echoes of an age confused, 
 
 Whose teachings rustle like to withered leaves 
 
 Whirled into eddies by a wintry wind ! 
 
 O the rich mystery of the soul we bear, 
 
 Unfathomed, widening till it v/eds with God ! 
 
 It takes, it gives, it is the only lord. 
 
 It deals our measure of the infinite. 
 
 Is past and present and what is to come. 
 
 It is the man and world, the God and heaven, 
 
 And when interpreted by poets' eyes 
 
 And made externe and fixed in during forms 
 
 Of beauty, which alone it deigns to wear, 
 
 The earth is peopled with the things it names 
 
 Divine, the philosophic and the good. 
 
 The musical. The soul is fount of all. 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 103 
 
 Shall hope unfurl his purple vans and steer 
 
 With happy throbbings to celestial bournes, 
 
 Only to welter amid cloudy drifts, 
 
 And burden all his plumes with mortal tears, 
 
 His ardor quenched in darkness ? Shall the voice, — 
 
 The prayer, the lamentation and the pain, — 
 
 That rises from a thousand lips debased 
 
 In the dust of time, its suppliant agony 
 
 Prolong forever, and no more appear 
 
 Bold foreheads tameless to disastrous shocks, 
 
 Clear-beaming eyes and manly rhythms that hymn 
 
 The lofty harmonies of life and love, 
 
 Valor and labor and victorious hands ? 
 
 O not to writhe in ashes and defile 
 
 His glorious locks, to waste divine desires 
 
 In childish penance and ungracious grief, 
 
 Was this fair star of God's humanity 
 
 Born from the abyss and taught to rise and set. 
 
 And, clothed with awful beauty, shine and sing. 
 
 But greater than the weakness and the shame. 
 
 And strong to slay the myriad-twining ill, 
 
 Man will arise, inspired by earnest thoughts, 
 
 To roll the anthem of a lordlier faith, 
 
 And follow with a conscious will that knows 
 
 Its greatness, all the purposes august 
 
 That he, urged to the height of his estate, 
 
 May handle and create." 
 
 And Paul, aglow, 
 Caught up the pregnant theme in passionate hands. 
 " This is the only hero whom I love : 
 Alway his princely features haunt my eye. 
 
I04 HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 He wears the weight of life with royal ease : 
 The cloudy flutterings of the raven night, 
 Stretching her ebon wings to cover up 
 The golden circle of his starry aim, 
 Conspire alone his beauty to increase. 
 He asks not of the scornful world an aim, 
 Whose clamors cannot ruffle the repose 
 That, like eternity, within him sleeps. 
 He knows a fountain set in amaranth. 
 Whereof who takes can neither bate nor fall, 
 But a most subtile alchemy can wield, 
 That, solving hostile forces, leaves him free. 
 Albeit he blend not with the dust and roar, 
 Hedged round with lonely thinkings, neither dull 
 The spirit's fine-wrought edge against the crust 
 Of the world, nor count it gain to pluck 
 The bloom of social culture, rude to play 
 The prank of vulgar splendor, yet he finds 
 A guerdon purchased not by gold or gems. 
 For what his hands accomplish shall endure 
 And burgeon into vaster, till it bless 
 All afterbirth \ yea, the clear rays he shoots, 
 Rounding the crescent into star, will flow 
 In tides of broadening lustre till they bathe 
 All peaks and plains, the desert and the deep. 
 The years march to the music of his voice. 
 The seasons gather brightness and the sun 
 Radiance, and all the starry throngs rejoice, 
 Since he has sung. So cunning is his lay, 
 Barbaric fancies quicken, and the hordes 
 Stream from their lairs in cavern and in crag. 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 105 
 
 His lips repeat with sweetest Orphic ease 
 The old, divine, eternal melodies 
 To which the timbers of the world were laid. 
 Stern nature from her stubborn mood is tamed, 
 Her pliant feet dance round in mazy rings. 
 Courage is his to trust his vision, speak 
 Relentlessly the law he finds and aye 
 Maintain to it his loyalty. Against 
 His mind severe and glowing love avail 
 Nothing the velvet palms of fondling fame. 
 But on the pompous semblance and the false 
 Supremacy he pauses not to urge 
 The shining terror of his arm." 
 
 He breathed. 
 But Arthur gibed at his oracular heat; 
 " O Paul, you fling your colors out so broad, 
 So lavish of grand lines in what you draw. 
 You seem to hit the moral gigantesque. 
 I miss the mortal mixture that would stir 
 My love and tears and make me feel him man. 
 As Byron paints a devil, you a saint. 
 Good men are well, so they be flesh and blood, 
 But I love not these pampered idolisms. 
 Not stocks nor stones nor hardened Stoic brawn, 
 The icy sheen, fixed eye and marble brow, 
 Pitiful continence of frozen hearts, 
 Can teach my blood new fire. O these serene 
 And polished dignities that look the god ! 
 Were I for one day Jove I 'd brush my hand 
 Across the v/orld and tumble from their seats 
 Some score of them. My soul would shake her sides 
 
I06 HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 To mark them beat the dust from their soiled robes, 
 And reinstate their crowns. O pish, not I 
 Immaculate, I love a fault or two. 
 Better the blow struck daringly, though vain, 
 Than sword forever rusting in the sheath." 
 
 Paul laughed. But Vivian from the minted grass 
 
 Rose half and loosed his volley of protest. 
 
 " I ween some harder blows are struck in the world 
 
 Than these you wot of, Arthur. Fie on you, 
 
 To dash your inky pot of cavil thus 
 
 Across these stately features. AVhile you prune, 
 
 You thrust the blind knife through the root of all. 
 
 These lofty virtues pillar and adorn 
 
 The very temple and the soul of man. 
 
 Tug not to loose them : if they fall, yourself 
 
 Are crushed beneath the ruins. But you love 
 
 From ways of contradiction, nursed of old. 
 
 To don the sable vizard of a mood 
 
 Not native to you ; overfond to flout 
 
 At what your truer heart extols as fair. 
 
 This time go free : take heed to sin no more." 
 
 All smiled at Vivian and he at himself. 
 
 Then said, " O Master and O Paul, beloved. 
 
 You fanned me into life of purer flame. 
 
 The childish ardor dies, the man arrives. 
 
 The symbols flee, but he whose wand invoked, 
 
 Their master and great Prospero, abides. 
 
 I pant for this large freedom in the soul." 
 
 And as he spake, gleams of peculiar joy 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 107 
 
 Played o'er the wrinkles of the Father's face j 
 
 A sire who smiles on some beloved child. 
 
 And lifting up his serious voice he said, 
 
 " The worship native to the child as blood, 
 
 Self-prodigal and barren of the force 
 
 That wisely will regard and disregard, 
 
 Too oft deals forth its costly gifts amiss. 
 
 But riper years are missioned to impart 
 
 A due subjection and due sovereignty. 
 
 This insight and full freedom will be yours : 
 
 But none may witness their benign approach, 
 
 Which eye of man has never seen, his ear 
 
 Heard never: a dew-fall, a plume of light, 
 
 A trance, they come. And somewhat as a child, 
 
 Amid the daily teachings of the hearth, 
 
 Parental accents, tongues of blithe compeers. 
 
 From the heart of the inarticulate confines 
 
 A language, a sweet miracle of speech, 
 
 Which each ensuing year nurses to form, 
 
 So wins the soul her secret certainty. 
 
 Heed well, my son, the words I speak. Belief 
 
 That marches to fulfil itself must wield 
 
 The weapons of no unheroic valor. 
 
 Wisely deny. So has true freedom birth. 
 
 Hearts strong to break from vain and solemn shows, 
 
 Unto the strait prescript and feeble sense 
 
 Of alien doctrine never bow, but seek 
 
 A revelation in themselves of peace 
 
 And harmony. Then make the spirit bold. 
 
 Servile is fear and blind to the vast love. 
 
 That shines from nature with perennial beams. 
 
I08 HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 Gleaned from all times, the purport of the man 
 
 Is but to pass with toil from point to point, 
 
 Finding, attaining, firmly based on love, 
 
 Which is the first and final of all laws. 
 
 Wherefore denial, yoked with fear, is death. 
 
 Sit, while the wondrous fabric of the race 
 
 Disjoints itself before the tranquil eye, 
 
 And every passing sect disclosure makes 
 
 Of its ambition. Let it rule or sink. 
 
 The earth feels not the shock beneath her rind. 
 
 You falter to accept the permanence 
 
 Of this or that. I say to you, doubt all. 
 
 And have them render witness of themselves. 
 
 Shake off the burdens of the centuries ; 
 
 With every man begins the world anew. 
 
 But whoso will uplift a suppliant hand 
 
 To smooth a ruffled God with many prayers, 
 
 Stuffed with repentance that goes forth in groans 
 
 And steeps the bruised soul in baths of tears. 
 
 Barren of good, but whets his pangs anew. 
 
 Vain is the melting heart and upward steam 
 
 Of lamentation. You shall be compact 
 
 Of fortitude and of enduring power j 
 
 Until upon the horny surge of fate 
 
 Your head be pillowed as on summer moss, 
 
 And when his joints asunder seem to fall, 
 
 And all his limbs are writhed in agony, 
 
 The soul may hold her scornful merriment, 
 
 And on the dancing gulfs established be, 
 
 As on the centre of the world. For aye 
 
 Lives and works-on the prime celestial law, 
 
I09 
 
 HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 Whose golden wheel is irreversible. 
 Therefore no murmurs, neither clasp of palms, 
 Nor faint nor spasm within, but evermore 
 The calm expectance of the mighty hope 
 That looks unto an end which cannot fail." 
 
 But at these words severe the tender cheek 
 Of Vivian paled, his soft eyes shone with tears, 
 And all his voice was broken as he said, 
 
 " Ah, Master, set me not a task too hard. 
 My soul is timorous of herself and all. 
 These words you speak are terrible : I seem 
 An atom banished from the face of light, 
 Cleaving in cheerless flight a pitchy void. 
 Defeated, base, deform, accurst, eclipsed, 
 Hunted by fierce disdain from gloom to gloom. 
 May I, the weakling of a summer hour, 
 Sound bold defiance at the gates of heaven ? " 
 
 " Ah, faithless," said the Master. " It is writ, 
 Heaven's kingdom is within you. Know full well. 
 Yourself are portion of the builded All, 
 Brother to what you seek. O then weep not 
 Like a weak babe within its nurse's arm, 
 That clings, and will not nestle in the breast 
 The mother offers, knowing not her face. 
 March forward, hopeful of the time to come. 
 And what you sought without, seek now within. 
 You shall envisage the unchanging Soul 
 With unimaginable splendor girt. 
 Play with her terrors lovingly and bathe 
 
no HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 In all her fiery deeps, for she is yours 
 
 And never can be taken. O dream not, 
 
 'T is given to scale the crystal walls of heaven, 
 
 And with familiar eyes to contemplate 
 
 The eternal forms in naked majesty ; 
 
 Nor yet to guess the puzzles of the world 
 
 By slow ascensions of imperious thought ; 
 
 Nor boldly spying out the secret halls 
 
 Of Knowledge, to behold her eye to eye. 
 
 But Love is yours ; gracious interpreter 
 
 Of the great silence and the mystery. 
 
 All victory has nature with an oath 
 
 Given to the soul that fearlessly obeys 
 
 Her inmost law of love. And Love is but 
 
 The Soul's divine acquaintance with herself. 
 
 Be not the fool of time. But rather know 
 
 Illusion harbors in the eye that sees, 
 
 And from the unconscious mind his currents flow. 
 
 Whose converse is with shadows, by degrees 
 
 Is turned to shadow, and his folly names 
 
 The world a potter's vacant trick. Purge then 
 
 The mind. Lift it to overpeer the peaks 
 
 Of time and sense, to where mid awful rays 
 
 The uninvested Truth unsearchably 
 
 Reposes. Cast aside these weights of doubt. 
 
 Trust the great God that he is good and fair 
 
 With inexpressive beauty. Break the band 
 
 That hinders, and surrender and forget ; 
 
 For these prelude the heaven-illumined eye, 
 
 The aspiring hope pinioned with starry fire, 
 
 The consecrated heart, the holiness. 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES. m 
 
 Divine revealments, satisfying peace. 
 
 Once islanded upon itself, the mind, 
 
 No more a shifting Delos, is bound fast 
 
 To the firm world and on its margins roll 
 
 The waters of the everlasting sea, 
 
 The thunder and the mighty harmony. 
 
 But ah, my son, all words are broken hints 
 
 Which life adjusts to a significance. 
 
 Yet these may prompt you in secluded hours 
 
 To toil without remission. Largelier 
 
 My heart desires to speak the pregnant lore 
 
 Of culture and a greater far than she, 
 
 Reverence, and haply will before I die. 
 
 And so, perchance, if you fail not in power, 
 
 Nor, slumbering, forego the constant eye 
 
 Of holy vigilance, you will achieve 
 
 Intelligence of the Divine and win 
 
 A high, imperishable goal. And then 
 
 Lift up thanksgiving and a voice of praise. 
 
 For who has held this knowledge, though he lose 
 
 Its quickening presence for a season, yea, 
 
 Although the dark floods whelm him for an age, 
 
 Alway retains a lofty memory 
 
 That through the foam and clamor bears him up 
 
 To be that force he has been and may be. 
 
 O yet, beware the common and the base. 
 
 Lest adverse fate, born of the recreant soul. 
 
 Work through all elements and accidents. 
 
 Empoison the sweet air and thieve away 
 
 The sustenance of purposes divine, 
 
112 HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 Yea, marring the prime splendor of its hope, 
 Topple the spirit into gulfs of night." 
 
 Then Vivian, re-emboldened and consoled, 
 Lifting his eyes from their abasement, smiled. 
 And to the Master said, " Great thanks I owe 
 For these unfoldings. Like a rock that feels 
 The throes of Phcebus' lyre, my heart perceives 
 Harmonious motions, instincts that presage 
 Triumph and sweetest reconcilement there. 
 'T is true that many shadows are withdrawn. 
 Enough, enough of dead mechanic days. 
 Of visual strivings touching transient ends. 
 Of sowing golden ends on barren sands. 
 But if there be some Good will never pass, 
 Some mountainous pillar firm amid the flood 
 Of that which, ever seeming, still must seem 
 The faithless figment of a deeper seeming, 
 Surely its lodgement centres in the soul. 
 O then no more the footless thought, no more 
 Anguish of warring fancies. I will be 
 Swift to forsake, encounter and endure, 
 Earnest to listen, instant to believe 
 Monitions that have there their birth." 
 
 And Paul 
 Leaned over and kissed Vivian on the cheek, 
 And said, " O friend, I will repeat a strain 
 A fair star gave me while I watched his steps 
 At midnight." And he turned upon his back, 
 Fixed his blue eye on heaven and thus began : 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 O well for him, whose spirit, wise 
 Above the mortal jar and bruit 
 Of seeming evils that impute 
 Discord to the designing skies, 
 
 Beholds the large necessity, 
 And each upon his starry road, 
 The shining periods of God 
 Complete themselves in majesty ; 
 
 Unharmed and undiminished, whole j 
 Infecting wild and baser forms 
 With their endeavor, as the charms 
 Of Orphic lute all natures stole. 
 
 Calm-hearted, as his trust is deep. 
 This one has amplitude of scope. 
 Even to the measure of his hope, 
 Because august Desire will keep 
 
 True to her proper ordinance. 
 No longer threading ways of mire. 
 Nor scorched in lonely lands of fire, 
 Nor drifted on the tides of chance. 
 
 And his achievement as a brook 
 Simple and pure and joyful runs. 
 Courts not acclaim of praise, nor shuns 
 The gorgon worldling's whetted look. 
 
 This the true sage who can postpone 
 The lesser gain that turns by use 
 
 "3 
 
114 HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 Into a seed of worst abuse, 
 
 Whose name is death, when fully grown, 
 
 Unto the lordly aftergood, 
 That comes with clouds of radiance, 
 Wearing a glorious countenance, 
 To every soul of noble mood. 
 
 But ill for him who thrusts a hand 
 Itching with thirst of base increase 
 Among the sweets while yet the bees 
 Come in thigh-burdened from the land. 
 
 He gathers loss and bitter pain. 
 O trust the years, they will achieve 
 A fairer than thy dream and weave 
 An ampler heaven, more pure of stain. 
 
 Let ripen that which grows. Debar 
 No crescent blossom from its girth 
 And golden finish, which the earth 
 Gives to her chosen with fond care. 
 
 Yet temper so thy shaping power 
 That each endeavor may be rife 
 With the one spirit of thy life, 
 And hour be kin to rolling hour. 
 
 Ah, he forestalls all increment. 
 Who counts the years of worth to hide 
 The steppings of unlawful pride 
 With splendor false and transient. 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 Let the eye range. Behold afar 
 A clearness on the brow of night, 
 The tempest's wing aglow with light, 
 Born from the wheels of some grand star. 
 
 Let the eye range. Behold the Deep 
 Slowly retires her mutinous heads, 
 While all along her million beds 
 The soul of Chaos lies asleep. 
 
 Let the eye range. Lo, the wise fate 
 Brings from the thunder and turmoil 
 With method sure and patient toil 
 Something of beautiful and great. 
 
 When down his slope ecliptic fallen a third, 
 The sun shot forth a drouthy glare, they rose. 
 And keeping alway round them cloaks of shade, 
 Thridded the land in talk of easier pitch j 
 Skimming with fitful wing a shifting theme. 
 But hovering with most glee about the skirts 
 Of science j spake of bulb and bract and whorl, 
 Sessile or petiolate ; pelted the rocks 
 With studious malice, rhomb or cube or prism, 
 Calc, talc, or sphene, pyrite or malachite ; 
 Or broached the polar drifts with theory j 
 Or stumbling on a fossil, talked of shell, 
 Saurian or mastodon. Anon they met 
 A fairy burg sequestered. Towering rocks 
 Precipitous, with ominous ledge and cliff 
 
 "5 
 
Il6 HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 Impending, dangled wreaths of ruin down 
 
 Above her. Yet she wore a smiling look, 
 
 A feature of security. They heard 
 
 The muffled murmur of the mill, the boom 
 
 Of mellow waters, where before his breast 
 
 The weir abrupt held out a sheeny targe ; 
 
 And saw how, moaning like Ixion old, 
 
 The brook, beneath remorseless paddles crushed, 
 
 Dragged out his mangled limbs in tortuous foam, 
 
 Where moved the monstrous wheel in lazy gyre. 
 
 Farther, they spied a cottage large and quaint. 
 
 Brown as the crags, yet breathing out a grace, 
 
 A meekness and a purity, within 
 
 The dusky circle of an elm whose top, 
 
 A cloud of green hung in the azure, drooped 
 
 Through all its languorous fringe. Hard by the cot 
 
 A sooty stithy clamored with the sledge. 
 
 And thick-lunged bellows creaked with every blast. 
 
 There nodding in an oaken chair asleep. 
 
 They saw a form under the latticed arch 
 
 That screened with plaitings of luxuriant vine 
 
 The lintel. And they named him, in a trice, 
 
 The white-haired Vulcan of the vicinage ; 
 
 Grey Colossean ruins of a frame 
 
 That might have borne the thunder-shocks of great 
 
 Alcides' heart. Under his load of snows 
 
 He bov/ed, a Titan sunk beneath the weight 
 
 Of the thunder, the severe Atlantian ridge 
 
 Of the sloped shoulder scarred and crushed \ the mail, 
 
 Seen through the v/ide-flung collar on his breast. 
 
 Close-linked and massive o'er the antique breadth, 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES, 
 
 117 
 
 Deep-dinted from a hundred jousts of life j 
 
 The mighty jaw unstrung and the strong eyes 
 
 Aweary, far retired within their caves, 
 
 O'er which the shagginess declined. He rose, 
 
 Catching their steps, and motioning salute 
 
 Came slowly forth and grasped the Master's hand ; 
 
 And for a space these hoary Pillars rose 
 
 In strange conjunction, beacons of a world 
 
 Long vanished. While the Three made lowly signs 
 
 Of meet obeisance, lo, he turned and caught 
 
 Their hands in welcome, led them in and said, 
 
 Ethan, the Smith, " Come sit, my lads, and share 
 
 My shade here. Let me look into your eyes. 
 
 Heigh-ho, it helps my age to have the beams. 
 
 The clear straight lightning of untamed youth. 
 
 Strike full upon me. From your cheeks, heigh-ho, 
 
 My soul sucks out a purple that will cheat 
 
 This death that hunts me of a day or two. 
 
 We had a whisper of you, — three strange lads, 
 
 Striplings from college, visiting' the Hills. 
 
 You 're packed with learning, as I read your brows. 
 
 Ay, and I mark the studious languor too 
 
 Of the upper eyelid ; but in you, meseems, 
 
 A sadness, sir, a trouble in the eye. 
 
 What, do you bury here some fresh love-scorn, 
 
 The poutings of disdainful lady there ? 
 
 O nay, no maiden lives so rude to slight 
 
 This constellation of fair attributes 
 
 Disclosed upon your face. By Thor, I have 
 
 A brace of cubs as rough to grapple with 
 
 As e'er were welded of our highland brawn j 
 
Il8 HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 But heigh-ho, lad, God bless me, they to you 
 
 Are the bulked pines that surge their unkempt curls 
 
 About our ledges, to the airy mast 
 
 That bends a graceful neck above the lake. 
 
 Nay, lad, I speak my heart out, what it feels." 
 
 And Vivian laughed and said, " Better to rove 
 A lion's whelp, the master of the plains, 
 Than drowse beside a kennel though in thralls 
 Of silk. Ye are a better folk than we. 
 Your marrow holds some grains of granite, we 
 Are but the pulp and down of things. Your heart 
 Drives the sure shock to brain and palm from year 
 To year undaunted, and ye put to task 
 Nature herself to keep your souls at bay. 
 Ye out-fate fate and lead him by the beard. 
 Are storm and sunlight, with your seasons fixed, 
 A part of all. But we nurse doubts and fears. 
 Ape, shuffle, cringe, the dapperlings of life, 
 Feed whimsy with a spoon, drink deep of foam, 
 Efts in the morning, deified at eve. 
 I half incline to Arthur and his text. 
 'T is life we seek, perennial, native, free. 
 That circulates in action, drains the world 
 To the lees and flings the empty goblet by. 
 These cogitations craze the blood and spring, 
 Harvests of dragon-teeth, a fiery host 
 Full-armed for onset." 
 
 " Heigh-ho," said the Smith 
 " Is wisdom bitter to her darlings ? Nay. 
 Somewhat 's awry. Albeit no weanling I 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 119 
 
 Of hers, nor from her Amazonian paps 
 
 Ever drew substance. Better thus, mayhap. 
 
 Your chin is smooth as any velvet peach, 
 
 Nor time yet brushes from your cheek the dew, 
 
 What, do you feed the worm of melancholy ? 
 
 Leave this to age that moans a youth misused, 
 
 Hopes darkened, shattered schemes. But you, nay, 
 
 lad. 
 You hug the haven yet, your eye knows not 
 The sea's mid-tempest. Pish, you sulk too soon. 
 By Thor, at your years I sang alway, blithe 
 As larks at morning, blackbirds at the noon. 
 Or gleeful swallov\^s wheeling down the eve. 
 Perchance there was a secret in it, lad. 
 It may be that the thing whereon I wrought 
 Preserved me, and the tool forever plied. 
 For not with silken touches have I known 
 The weapons of my labor. Dawn and dusk 
 Have heard the anvil upon which I toiled 
 Groan with the thunders of my fashioning, 
 Nor ever seen the spark upon my forge 
 Cease from its bickering." 
 
 And Vivian then, 
 " Whoso would have the pearl must pay the price. 
 Not less I half preceive this fruit we pluck 
 Is ashes at the core, and knowledge too. 
 The armorial sign of fools, a perilous wisp 
 Tempting to Stygian fens. Sceptre or sledge, 
 What differs, if we strike in tune with law ? 
 From toiling hands a purer piety 
 Ascends, than from the cauldrons where are brewed 
 
I20 HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 The polities and systems of all time. 
 
 doubly blest, sir, you, on whom the plagues, 
 That strike at such as stuff themselves with books, 
 Have never breathed in baleful pestilence ! " 
 
 But Ethan turned upon him sharp and said, 
 " I read my Bible and my Shakspeare, lad, 
 Heigh-ho, these two are books enough for me. 
 And if I chance to turn a later page. 
 Some leaf that Will and Allen pore upon, 
 It is too idle and I cast it down. 
 Heigh-ho, I think the time is fed on milk 
 All color but no pith, all whey, no curd. 
 
 1 know not if I know this malady 
 
 That cankers you, nor like the Master here. 
 
 Feel I the bottom with my fathoms, lad. 
 
 Untempered I, unhewn, nor babble oft 
 
 Beyond the lessons of my craft. But yet 
 
 I 've had a glimpse or two, have heard the ring 
 
 Of hammers that were never swung by man. 
 
 And seeing that my bones yearn to you, lad. 
 
 Heigh-ho, I '11 hang my rag of wisdom out. 
 
 Sieze then the haft of labor and forget 
 
 Past, future, world and man himself in that 
 
 You shape with fiery consecration. So 
 
 You make a supplication unto laws, 
 
 The strong, controlling nurses of the world. 
 
 Old and impartial, whose hard breasts undrained 
 
 Will yield you marrow and full power. My lad. 
 
 Believe me, these plain prayers are never vain. 
 
 God lives, the earth turns, sun and moon give light. 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 121 
 
 Man comes and has his season and returns. 
 
 'T is said, things were not rightly framed at first, 
 
 And that the willful sphere has snapped a beam. 
 
 If this be so, by Thor, it strikes my mind. 
 
 Not you nor I will mend it, lad. O shame, 
 
 To prate of Evil alway, quake and moan 
 
 Until the spectre curdles all our veins. 
 
 Arise, 't is but the mirage of the mind. 
 
 That flees, you marching. And if man were man, 
 
 Were only man, not God nor archangel, 
 
 This thing were not : but he is less than man. 
 
 I let God do his work and I do mine. 
 
 I let the world roar and I hold my own. 
 
 All is not mine, but what is, that I keep ; 
 
 My life is mine to use it as I can. 
 
 Work then, my lad, strike early and strike late. 
 
 And small or great so that your deed be pure, 
 
 'T will purge like a strong wind the heart of gloom 
 
 And rout the host of profitless inquest 
 
 That blow their ram's horns round about your walls 
 
 To force them crumble. Heigh-ho, come with me. 
 
 And hear my Will and Allen sing a rhyme 
 
 I taught them w^hen their hands first felt the sledge." 
 
 Beside the forge they found the Anakim 
 
 Dark-haired, broad-shouldered. And at Ethan's voice 
 
 They came to greet their slender visitants 
 
 With eyes of cloudless courtesy and words 
 
 That witnessed of an inner dignity. 
 
 Of hearts self-reverent. They lifted up 
 
 Deep voices and the alternate hammer rang. 
 
122 HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 Here is breaking a new brightness, 
 Rouse, and gird the soul with laughter, 
 Take the swiftness and the lightness. 
 And persistence that comes after. 
 
 Strike, strike. 
 Seeds of hope within you cherish, 
 Let the sin and sorrow perish. 
 
 Smile when thickest wrongs oppress you, 
 When disasters hasten, sing. 
 Will you have God's love to bless you, 
 Find that love in everything. 
 
 Strike, strike. 
 Lift the thought and purge the passion, 
 Upward change for aye in fashion. 
 
 Nought is lacking, menials myriad 
 Watch your steps with fond devotion, 
 Stars of fate are rolled in period] 
 Round you with melodious motion. 
 
 Strike, strike. 
 Fullest life the heavens bequeath you, 
 Plant the stable world beneath you. 
 
 Aye achieving, aye resigning. 
 Life be simple, life be holy. 
 Teaching, founding, not repining, 
 Take the perfect stature slowly. 
 
 Strike, strike. 
 Nearest hest is clearest duty. 
 Purest heart the surest beauty. 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 123 
 
 So much the noble Smith and his bold sons 
 Took hold on them, they tarried till the eve 
 Perched in the elm above them, then set forth 
 Reluctantly, with promise to explore 
 Again the genial nook. And as they moved, 
 The eve, descending from her sapphire heights, 
 Through labyrinthine purples disappeared. 
 With many a fond delay and backward glance j 
 And from the heart of twilight slowly rose 
 The diamond fabric of the night, complete 
 In splendor round its everlasting dome. 
 
124 
 
 HIGHLAND RAMBLES, 
 
 Noble forever the man 
 
 Who builds his life serenely, 
 
 Divine in scope and plan ; 
 
 Droops not his eye, but keenly 
 
 Pursues a law sublime and sure, 
 
 A law of beauty that will endure, 
 
 Of melody that is sweet and pure, 
 
 Which beam and rafter will hear with glee 
 
 And silently fall into harmony. 
 
 He is master of the shield, 
 He is cunning with the spear. 
 Never warrior rode afield. 
 So swift and sure and clear. 
 
 Cold as sunlight upon snow. 
 Warm as summer in her passion, 
 Veering to strange winds that blow 
 Never in the selfsame fashion. 
 Changeling of each passing spell. 
 What he was could few men tell. 
 Albeit the greatness of his soul 
 Slumbered peaceful as the pole 
 Round which a hundred planets roll. 
 
125 
 
 HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 It will guide him and inform, 
 Though every star be lost in storm, 
 And what it does forbid or bid, 
 He shuns or seeks with glee, 
 And nothing from his mind is hid, 
 That known to it should be. 
 
 Foes approach in threatening guise. 
 
 He steals their weapons, charms their eyes, 
 
 Friends with costly aid arrive, 
 
 He shows them all they hoped to give. 
 
 He knows the secret ordinance. 
 
 The impulse and the goal ; 
 
 Amid the wild and winding dance 
 
 Of shifting fate and eddying chance. 
 
 Moves the fulfilling soul. 
 
 Culling by nice affinity. 
 
 Shaping with wise dexterity. 
 
 Fusing with fiery unity. 
 
 Till on its orbit roll 
 
 A fair and starlike whole. 
 
 The maiden Dawn yet dreamed within her bower. 
 The voice of Phosphor, singing nigh her couch. 
 Long time had stirred her crimson-veined lids 
 With gentle tremors through their silken grain. 
 Ere she awoke and timidly peeped out 
 From half-oped lattice, baring one smooth cheek, 
 O'er-sprinkled with the rose, to soothe awhile 
 
126 HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 The amorous throbbings of the minstrel star. 
 
 " Aside, aside, those jealous curtains sway j " 
 
 He sang with lingering passion as he rose, 
 
 " Ye tardy Hours, will ye not loose the folds 
 
 Of silver-wefted fingering, that I 
 
 With one long glance of love may cool mine eyes ? 
 
 Hard-hearted ! For before her feet forsake 
 
 Her argent arbors, I must die forlorn 
 
 Far up in heaven." But his mourning fell 
 
 Fainter and ever fainter till the Morn 
 
 Entered his chariot-shell. His bright steeds shook 
 
 From their white manes the foamy hyaline, 
 
 And drove the golden surf round cloudy isles. 
 
 Mooring at last by purple-breasted shores 
 
 Rimming the west. And here he disembarked 
 
 And moved supreme, his ray-embroidered vest 
 
 Floating on gentle winds from loosened bands 
 
 As with imperial glance he turned to eye 
 
 His wide celestial realm. 
 
 Upon the bench 
 Before his cottage-door the Master mused : 
 '' Name ye it death because the soul is blending 
 With beauty and the majesty of being ? 
 Behold, his glorious head from darkness freed, 
 Grandly the peaks of light his wheels ascend, 
 Fraught with a holy purpose, a desire 
 Amplest and loftiest. Ah, Heosphor, now 
 The large fair smiles are fading from thy face, 
 And while round saffron cliffs thy chariot bends, 
 The luminous surges shatter at thy back. 
 Not sad art thou. With thee 't is calm and well, 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 127 
 
 Albeit thy sweetness grows invisible, 
 Whelmed in the ocean of a mightier light. 
 Not death, not death : but unto life more clear, 
 Higher and heavenly great our paths belong." 
 
 Sounding the close, his voice swelled like a trump, 
 
 And from their pillows drew the Three, who dozed 
 
 In wigwams wattled of the plundered pine. 
 
 And each in matin welcome kissed the brow 
 
 They reverenced above the front of kings. 
 
 " To-day the Lake is ours," said Vivian, " come, 
 
 Not yet the rose is opened on her stem. 
 
 The bee not ventures j 't is the sweetest hour j 
 
 Come, let us smell the Morning in her bud." 
 
 And Paul made up a roll of sandwiches, 
 
 And dipping cheerily from hill to vale. 
 
 They took for guide a froward brook that drew 
 
 Tremulous trails of shining waves through deep 
 
 Ravines, and darting tauntingly before, 
 
 Chided their lagging feet with summoning shouts. 
 
 And by the pebbly shallows leaping wild. 
 
 The younger travelers tingled all the air 
 
 With merriment ; shot random shafts of wit, 
 
 Frolic discourse aglow in every word 
 
 From happy pulses, lavish of their fire. 
 
 Profuse in praise of every charm they met, 
 
 These for a season loosed the rigid rules 
 
 That gird us in the daily course of life, 
 
 Forgot the pressing future and its needs, 
 
 Forgot the secret cares that baffle hope, 
 
 Forgot grave puzzles in the thread of life, 
 
128 HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 Half taught that all was pastime or a dream. 
 Treacling the long-ribbed margin where the lake 
 Swam in repose, robbed of her central pulse, 
 The Three doffed vestment and embraced the flood, 
 Breasting the willing waves. And flushed anon 
 With easy mastery, put boldly forth 
 To buflet with the lordliest surge they found j 
 But soon with panting sides and aching arms 
 Set foot on shore and welcomed boot and coat. 
 
 And thus renewed, like sons of Jove they clomb 
 
 A jutting bank and on the woven moss 
 
 That sloped through cedarn boughs, sat down and 
 
 watched 
 The great lake widen and the sky come down, 
 The shadowy bars that reached from shore to shore, 
 White ships that turned to vassal wind and wave. 
 Half-buried in the distant west or clear 
 From figure-head to mizen-top. A shore 
 Abrupt curved slowly southward and shook out 
 High beads of oak and pine above the seas. 
 Northward far-off a rim of half-guessed land 
 Plunged like a sword into the golden west. 
 Beneath, the meek waves wooed the stubborn rock 
 Flinging a dolorous murmur round its brows. 
 And ever ceased not from their suppliant task. 
 Urged by a power unrespited, more stern 
 Than the brute tyrant whom they ran to kiss. 
 
 And having seen and heard, they turned the page 
 Of one who sang his honied thought divine 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 129 
 
 Sweeter than Lydian air or Phrygian lute, 
 Yet sometimes rugged as the hymning seas j 
 Beloved, him who wears the faultless leaf. 
 Whereon a magic languor seized their souls, 
 And airy-footed Silence came and pressed 
 Large draughts of visioned nectar to their lips. 
 And they, spell-stricken as before a God, 
 Drank, and fell deeper into mystic dreams. 
 Lost sense of lake and sky and ship and shore. 
 Wide-wandering through low-bosomed lands that 
 
 breathed 
 With delicate music swaying round and round ; 
 Beheld things new and wondrous, gods and men 
 Mixt ; and lofty summits lustrous-dim 
 With purple light ; and heard the syren chat 
 Of viewless nymphs with silvery laughs and sighs. 
 Thus the swift trances came and broke and blended, 
 Soothing, beguiling them of conscious thought, 
 Until a coarse cry, grumbled from a skiff. 
 Oared noisily by early fishermen 
 Bringing the spoil from newly-lightened nets, 
 Thrust ruinously up its presence there 
 Amid the misty splendor of their sleep. 
 And as a Nereid bevy tremulous, 
 Just startled by the footing of a man, 
 Dive with low shrieks into their coral halls. 
 So these weird fancies fled them, and they waked 
 Uncertain and bewildered in the shade. 
 
 The Patriarch smiled at them, and partly shamed 
 That such effeminate sorcery had wiled 
 
130 HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 The sternness from their bosoms, stolen so deft 
 
 The keys that do unlock the castled calm 
 
 Of manhood, and possessed their gates and towers, 
 
 They snatched a fairy tome of Greek, and read 
 
 How Epictetus taught the Roman world 
 
 To build their lives of stately mould, of strength 
 
 Rock-hewn from granite or the Parian stone. 
 
 And having tasted of the Stoic fount. 
 
 Their hearts won back their firmness, and all shame 
 
 Fled like a vapor from the polar chill. 
 
 A boat drew nigh. They hired it and embarked. 
 
 And Vivian sought the poop, but Paul gave out 
 
 The snowy bosom of a minion sail 
 
 To the cool breeze ; and Arthur sat astern, 
 
 Playing upon the rudder with a palm 
 
 Perfect in pilotage, that thrilled the bark 
 
 With every veering impulse of his will ; 
 
 Obedient to the spirit of his touch 
 
 As a love-breathing lute unto the quick 
 
 Warm fancies of a maid in wooing-time. 
 
 An hour the keel spun forth the silver wake, 
 
 An hour, in front, burgeoned a breadth of seas. 
 
 Then from the wave a baby isle was born. 
 
 Wearing upon its brow what seemed a star 
 
 Or crag-caught meteor, smit with fiery throes 
 
 Till it resume its heaven and unfold 
 
 Its error wild. They moored beside a strand. 
 
 Pied with bright pebbles, smooth as those calm 
 
 banks 
 Where Triton wont to lead his ocean-bands. 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 131 
 
 And blow his horn through all a summer's day. 
 
 Atlantis in her dawn of loveliness, 
 
 Nor gardens of divine Alcinoos, 
 
 Nor those impurpled meads whose fabled bloom 
 
 Cushioned the feet of the immortal race, 
 
 Surpassed this fair demesne. To them it seemed 
 
 All seasons breathed an equal influence. 
 
 Perpetual music floated from the bowers, 
 
 And that all skies were fortunate as where 
 
 The prime ancestor held discourse with Heaven 
 
 In his supremest hour. Lush champaign lawns 
 
 Bubbled in founts that veiled their naiad eyes 
 
 With leafy lids or gushed from snowy urns 
 
 Where sea-gods dreamed in marble. There were 
 
 groves 
 Luxurious and lined with silky gales ; 
 Boughs of all leaves, from which fine odors rain 
 Like fainting melodies, in whose thick shades 
 Dian drew back the arrow to its head. 
 Or white-armed Danaid spilled the pattering wave. 
 AH round a harmony of rills j all round 
 Clear pearls of sound, the largess of all throats. 
 Midmost, an isle within the isle arose. 
 In cone ascending to its summit, crowned 
 With a white fabric builded temple-wise, 
 Whose burnished dome flashed crystal in the sun. 
 And round the inner isle a silent stream. 
 In perfect circle ordered, moving, seemed 
 Like Saturn's silver ring that without sound 
 Wheels on its orb with steps severe and slow. 
 From this went radiations of bright rills 
 
132 
 
 HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 Outward in stairs of cataract to the lake, 
 Building the iris of purpureal beams ; 
 Melodious in their purl as those which lulled 
 The drowsy Heroes lapt in asphodel. 
 All seemed the shadow of a high intent, 
 The poesy of some mysterious dream j 
 As if a bold magician, vision-struck, 
 Lured by ideal glimpses in his soul. 
 Had given to enchanted thoughts investiture 
 By fine creative charm cunningly said. 
 
 " A myth, a myth," cried Vivian. " Paul, 't is yours, 
 
 Whose fancies swarm like golden atomies 
 
 On a slant sun-beam, to devise conceit 
 
 Or legend rhyming with the spot." And Paul, 
 
 " Come, sit by Nilus and his sphinx, and hear. 
 
 I '11 feign a baby poet, fair as morn. 
 
 Under Arcadian awnings fast asleep. 
 
 Up from the sea a hoary mariner, 
 
 As old as Hindus fable of their priests. 
 
 Appears, and spying the pellucid pearl. 
 
 Hides it within his bosom and embarks. 
 
 Past cape and port, from ocean-belt to belt. 
 
 His wreathen steeds, from deep Neptunian stalls 
 
 Fresh-yoked, and shaking starlight from their manes, 
 
 A day and night spurn back the liquid leas. 
 
 By this fair isle his beak of crystalline 
 
 He bridles, and upon the sumptuous sward 
 
 Places the slumber-sanguined child in shade 
 
 Of a paused cloud that brims with orange hues. 
 
 Angels he summons ministrant, calls up 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 133 
 
 Ambrosial influences that shall guide 
 
 His feet where fruits immortal ripen, where 
 
 Eternal fountains flow. He tasks the suns 
 
 With their most gracious energies to weave 
 
 Gently into his lucent cheek the soft 
 
 And vermeil dartings of auroral skies. 
 
 And in his eyes the light of beauty lodge. 
 
 Shielded by wisdom and by triple love, 
 
 Thus would the essential young divinity 
 
 Rejoice with secret gladness. Here no voice 
 
 Of a sad world in agony would mar 
 
 Imaginative soarings. Governance 
 
 That nips the fancy in its virgin grace 
 
 Or trips the instinctive pacings of the mind. 
 
 Nor falsity profaning the young thought, 
 
 Would cloud the heavenly orbing of his soul, 
 
 Nor league his spotless hands with infamy. 
 
 But this great seer should set to golden laws 
 
 The tumult of his youthful harmony 
 
 And teach his will a wise celerity. 
 
 And when his heart was perfect and his mind 
 
 A brightness, he should cleave the backward foam 
 
 And bring a new Saturnian age to men." 
 
 But Arthur's mocking laugh rang loud and sure 
 
 As thunder after levin, and he said, 
 
 " O dainty bard, O most miraculous bard ! 
 
 He 'd write his songs in mystic runes, I guess, 
 
 On earth unfathomable. I fancy him. 
 
 Serenely sailing, on a sudden struck 
 
 Through all his sails by fiercest critic flaws. 
 
 His spars plucked like a goose, and all his bright 
 
134 HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 Streamers wide-winnowed round the skies. O pish! 
 
 I am no vates, but meseems the Seer 
 
 Should centred stand in his humanity, 
 
 Interpreting the time unto itself. 
 
 Is poesy the froth of idle wits, 
 
 The flaunting of a false and painted plume ? 
 
 May moping dreamers wanton with her locks, 
 
 Or fools play suitor to her shining limbs ? 
 
 The hoiden bard whose leprous hands assoil 
 
 Her vestal snow, and seek to drag her down 
 
 Through miry marts to mate with courtesans, 
 
 Scarce wanders from his office more than he 
 
 Who always strikes his lyre in apogee. 
 
 But this pink-fancied gentleman you paint 
 
 Were better of a wassail bout or two. 
 
 O dainty bard, O perfect bard, O bard ! " 
 
 And Paul, " Nay, you are harder than a stone, 
 
 Passing the worth and thundering on the fault. 
 
 For all is dream, or most. I only seek 
 
 The dream within the dream." But Arthur cried, 
 
 " Behold, I starve upon your idle stuff. 
 
 Fetch forth the sandwiches and let us eat." 
 
 And while they broke their fast and drank the urn 
 
 Of Nilus, in a neighboring grove arose 
 
 A clear and trilling laughter uncontrolled. 
 
 Whose music played upon the island-hush, 
 
 Touching the keys of silence till she sang 
 
 A song of silver echoes right and left. 
 
 Then all was still as long a time as glides 
 
 Betwixt two pipings of a perched lark. 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 135 
 
 And while the Three stared round with troubled eyes, 
 
 Jaws pausing at their tasks and crusts half raised, 
 
 Peal followed ringing peal, like parleying horns 
 
 In merry England when the fox is up. 
 
 Rising, they caught through leafy bosks the flash 
 
 Of ivory necks and snowy-fluttering folds. 
 
 And one, who seemed the queenliest, came and said, 
 
 Her cheeks all crimson, " Pardon us, we pray. 
 
 It was our hap, not choice. Before we saw, 
 
 We heard. We beg you, take not from our mirth 
 
 An alien sense of pain." She turned to fly. 
 
 "Ah, Cora," said the Sire, "you know me not?" 
 
 But at his voice she came and took his hands 
 
 And bade him welcome, welcome. " Sir, I 'm sure 
 
 Your heart will overlook it. I saw not. 
 
 So giddy with my strange discourteous plight. 
 
 'T is long since you have come. How old you seem ! 
 
 Daily my father names you. We have planned 
 
 Some day to clamber to your hermitage." 
 
 She called her troop of maidens, lovely nymphs, 
 
 Eyes of all iris, golden brows and dark, 
 
 Cheeks rosed or lilied, dimpled or sedate. 
 
 Pink lips and pearly teeth and milky palms. 
 
 All mingled straight in cordial intercourse 
 
 Until the Master drew his youth away 
 
 To seek the host within the inner isle. 
 
 Crossing the flood on fairy arcs of wire, 
 
 That mimicked, with apt shape and color, spans 
 
 Of rainbow, thence they clomb with loitering looks 
 
 From flowery terrace unto terrace up. 
 
 The Host came forth and greeted them _; a man 
 
136 HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 Ripe in an eye that drank the world like light. 
 Faint furrowy traces meted out his brow, 
 Foot-prints of oft-alighting thought j his cheeks, 
 Ruddy and lightly touched with wisest lines. 
 Swept down in stately curve upon a chin 
 Majestic, calm, whereon all storms were wrecked. 
 Through marble columns passing in, they found 
 Ample saloons and hung with gorgeous folds, 
 Product of cunningest looms ; as rare, perchance, 
 In texture as the wondrous tissues wrought 
 By young Arachne ; emblem and device 
 Embroidered, pointing to a secret sense. 
 Yet manifold in type and tint to please 
 Fastidious eyes. And everywhere were nooks 
 Monastic, shy recesses girt with tomes j 
 The Delphic utterance of all time. Long halls 
 He opened. And whate'er the soul of man 
 With impulse bold has wrested from the scope 
 Of lawless nature by victorious thought. 
 Was there incarnate in divinest form. 
 Perfect unto his hope. And one contained 
 Choicest and sweetest forms of harmony, 
 In which the burning heart aspires to pour 
 The passion of its mortal ecstacy, 
 Its proud expectancy and lofty cheer. 
 The height of its desire. All instruments 
 Of softest chord or finest-ordered reed 
 Tempted the skillful hand, and in the midst 
 Polymnia touched the lyre with eyes that drew 
 Their melodies from heaven. And one was shown, 
 Thick-peopled with those manly brows august. 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 137 
 
 Who fought and overcame, simple and brave, 
 Not scorning to be just, through loss and harm 
 Loyal to holy aims, entire of blame. 
 And one unfolded on its pictured walls 
 Methods of piety, whereby the soul, 
 Suppliant, seeks divine deliverance 
 From earthly thralls, an immortality. 
 
 And these were ranged concentric to the dome. 
 That rained perpetual splendor like to that 
 Beheld with wildered eyes upon the top 
 Of Paradise by the dazed Florentine. 
 Centre of all, of temple and of isle, 
 Behold, alighting on a golden sphere, 
 A burning seraph glowed, her wings just furled 
 From some divine career. The snowy vans 
 Were dyed with vermeil flushes, and her lips 
 Stirred with a smile of utter sweetness, calm 
 And holy to inspire the soul that gazed 
 With saintly passion. On the sphere was writ, 
 " Beauty has golden ordinance of her own. 
 Her feet in one unchanging cycle move. 
 Ever unto herself a sphere complete. 
 She must repeat herself unto herself 
 By an eternal love." Some hours The Three 
 Strolled with increasing wonder and delight 
 The enchanted palace, while the elder twain 
 Discoursed without in pleasant shade, alone. 
 On plinth and pedestal, cornice and frieze 
 They read a hundred mottoes sown in gold, 
 Bright as the finger that aforetime scared 
 
138 HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 The Babylonite \ deep precepts that contained 
 
 The pith of stateliest wisdom old and new, 
 
 All centering upon culture and how best 
 
 The soul may touch its greatest. Weighed with lore. 
 
 Like argosies from Ind, they left the halls, 
 
 And sought the Masters, mingling word of thanks 
 
 With lavish eulogies. And Vivian said, 
 
 " I solve not the full meaning, but all seems 
 
 To meet in Beauty, the Ideal one." 
 
 " This is my chosen covert from the glare 
 
 Of summer," said the Host, " a prank of years 
 
 Untempered, that into exhaustless mines 
 
 Of fortune dropped a hand too prodigal. 
 
 I have enforced the islet to express 
 
 The visual symbol of a phantasy 
 
 That shaped the meditations of those days. 
 
 Ever the law of culture wrought in me ; 
 
 Without, a discord, but within, a peace. 
 
 I saw brave spirits crushed beneath the weight 
 
 Of their ov/n selves, enduring energies 
 
 Canceled by trivial bias or misuse, 
 
 A thousand battle and one wear the crown. 
 
 And I perceived a law behind the world 
 
 That came and overcame, but made its home 
 
 In man, and in the inly-motioned mind ; 
 
 Mine and not thine, or thine not mine, a law 
 
 Of personality, which gave and took, 
 
 Knew to accept and to reject by choice 
 
 Instinctive, and I wrought from hour to hour 
 
 Wisely to amplify this mastership. 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 139 
 
 For from the primal hands which have assigned 
 
 Its own elliptic unto every star, ^ 
 
 The many-ordered soul of man receives 
 
 Some impulse of peculiar destiny, 
 
 His own, and which he may not e'er forego. 
 
 Herein is hid the reason and the height 
 
 Of his attainment. Centred upon this, 
 
 He gently radiates his million beams. 
 
 Drinking the dew from the celestial flower, 
 
 Beauty, the truest amaranth, and adds 
 
 His harmony unto the noble choir, 
 
 The universal anthem that ascends 
 
 From a victorious humanity. 
 
 Then, on all peaks a light of God ; within, 
 
 Olympian power to purpose and achieve." 
 
 And Vivian, " Culture, culture, 't is a word 
 Noised in my ears by every hand that clangs 
 The philosophic cymbals. Does it bear 
 A weightier meaning than our fathers knew ? 
 Is it not heartless ? Can its veins take fire 
 With any liberal self-renouncing hope ? 
 Grant it a majesty, 'tis cold and stern 
 As Alpine glaciers, crushing as they move." 
 
 And with a smile the Host made answer calm. 
 " There needs the equal hand that drew of old 
 The circle, to configure her in full. 
 The imperial Art, to which all meaner use 
 Brings hostage j her domain the permanent soul, 
 Its proud ascensions, majesty of doom, 
 
140 
 
 HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 Nor less the world, its ages, races, deeds, 
 
 Sins, sorrows, wisdoms, mounting pieties j 
 
 Her method life, mysterious interchange 
 
 Of each with each, fine unison of laws 
 
 Receptive and creative. Man and world, 
 
 Urim and Thummim on her bosom shine. 
 
 I trust not unto flighty aims that skim 
 
 Sublimely all the heavens, but mostly miss 
 
 The occasion that implores a remedy. 
 
 Nor much avails who, couched on learned down. 
 
 Prates all day long of an ideal world ; 
 
 Less he, who bondaged unto sensuous tasks. 
 
 The inglorious menial of himself, kneads bricks 
 
 In Egypt, never purging from his soul 
 
 The hideous grime, nor lifting heavenward gaze 
 
 To pierce the sooty vapors of his kiln. 
 
 But life is mediator 'twixt two worlds, 
 
 Real, ideal ; unto neither given, 
 
 But fusing both into a throbbing whole, 
 
 The possible present. All is use, but man, 
 
 Ever the master-user, uses use. 
 
 Thence are there wise eclectic arts that pluck 
 
 Its proper excellence from every thing : 
 
 Souls that with cunning sympathies endued, 
 
 Read secrets where none seem, unsymbolize 
 
 Material forms, perceive a wondrous light 
 
 Set in the heart of midnight, or descry 
 
 A darkness blazoned on the front of noon. 
 
 For not in fiery gazing vision lies. 
 
 But in the cunning couching of the eye. 
 
 There are, of their own hearts incontinent, 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 Weak prodigals of their best attribute, 
 Who alienate high heaven by suits ill-timed. 
 Await, if your expectancy be void, 
 Weep not, the loss will hatch a golden gain." 
 
 And Vivian said, " This lesson gives me joy. 
 Instructed, by the Master, of the Soul, 
 Scorn darkened in me for a world debased ; 
 Content and grateful to behold no more 
 Her sodden lineaments, nor ever hear 
 The surge and welter of her panic seas. 
 Nobler Stylites or far Therapeut 
 Riddling the law symbolic in his shrine, 
 Or Brahmin, visioned child of loneliness. 
 On large conitions elevate to blend 
 With Vishnu, inexhaustible, supreme. 
 Yet hour by hour with looks of keen reproach 
 She came before me, and a pang was born 
 That aught by God created should be held 
 Unclean and an abhorrence. And this law 
 Of a benign alliance which you name. 
 Of world with man, proud uses of the soul, 
 Is dear to me. O lift yet more the veil." 
 
 And the Host said, '' Strive not to strive amiss. 
 O rail not at the world, nor scorn, but use j 
 How, none may teach you but yourself alone. 
 Prelude to this august election, purge 
 The eyes of film, the breast of mortal fear. 
 And make desire in lustral fountains white; 
 Lead then the spirit up the fulgent sides 
 
 141 
 
142 
 
 HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 Of the mount of God, into the awful cloud 
 
 Have entrance, and with face low-bowed await 
 
 Prescript celestial. From this hour no more 
 
 Your goings in and out belong to you. 
 
 A sign will move before you, and a voice 
 
 Haunt you with high behest. Thence you will live 
 
 By the one law, your own, not less nor yet 
 
 Greater ; unto yourself will be an aim, 
 
 A fullness and a beauty, and advance 
 
 Thereby the full behoof of humankind. 
 
 Calm will your days succeed, not tossed and wrecked 
 
 By myriad askings of the double world, 
 
 Within, without. Rejecting all that works 
 
 Discord into the music of your thought. 
 
 Content to bear, forbear, equal to seek 
 
 The One through guises of the Manifold, 
 
 Your heart shall be instinct with light, itself 
 
 Within itself complete, not asking help. 
 
 " O for some fine and airy syllable. 
 To prison in one perfect sound the soul 
 Of this high theme ! Medea's cauldron she, 
 From which the lifeless fragments of the world 
 Come forth a living creature fair and young 3 
 Darkness and light, nadir and zenith met ; 
 The one, the all ; atom and universe ; 
 The protean elf of utter paradox. 
 What eye discerns in subtile rise and fall 
 The fairy lungs of the rose, or from the bee 
 Lures his deft takings-up and passings-by ? 
 Culture is all. Ever the larger eye, 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 143 
 
 The purer heart. The sphere her symbol is. 
 
 She shuns not, nor disdains, nor is too fond. 
 
 Sunlike her beams brood over sea and marsh, 
 
 Thence plucking exhalations that will feed 
 
 Her chosen plots, her nooks of Paradise. 
 
 She lays the axe upon the crumbling roots 
 
 Of old authority, and on her front 
 
 Wears * Freedom ' graven as her sole device. 
 
 Freedom, word used by all, by most misused, 
 
 Freedom, by all men claimed, by few achieved, 
 
 A few great hearts who hand her down to us. 
 
 The earth at first a centric core of flame. 
 
 Floated for ages round the nebulous pools. 
 
 Then rained the slime, spawned monsters, and at last, 
 
 Flourished the climes and seasons, and the earth 
 
 Rolled through her sister-lights a perfect star. 
 
 Slowly the cycles finish : let us wait. 
 
 Go, play like children in the light of beauty 
 
 And so be safe. Love well what is your own. 
 
 And Love will make the universe your own. 
 
 " Inspired by reason, we reclaim the soul, 
 Point after point of gnarled wilderness 
 Subdued by lavish spending of our strength, 
 From states of nature, till a land ensue 
 Waving with plenteous harvests. Thus we come 
 To know the highest purport of this art 
 Which consummates the features of the mind ; 
 The universal axis on which she 
 With all her stately constellations turns. 
 Aud this is Beauty, the original Form. 
 
144 
 
 HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 Poising on subtle scales the circumstance, 
 
 She tempers life with fitting ordinance, 
 
 The outer and the inner world adjusts 
 
 Musically each to each. She guides, impels, 
 
 Spurs, curbs \ ever subjecting word and deed 
 
 To the law. She fuses day in day and melts 
 
 The iron years to mould her high intent. 
 
 Her plastic hands endue humanity 
 
 With clear immortal graces. She informs 
 
 With unity the broken ore of life. 
 
 Unresting she perfects her handiwork, 
 
 Imbreathes her burning ideal in man, 
 
 And incarnates her godhood, meting forth 
 
 With a fine insight, exquisitest skill. 
 
 Faint finger-throes of finish, till at last 
 
 Beauty, supreme and in eternal calm, 
 
 Stands sole, and yields delight to heaven and earth. 
 
 " But who shall lift the fancy beyond this ? 
 
 What tongue shall sing of Beauty ? Who shall prove 
 
 Her Godhead 1 For she dwells too high, too far 
 
 For vision, deep-sequestered in the heart 
 
 Of that unchanging Soul whom we adore. 
 
 Does true divinity to mortal eye 
 
 Disrobe herself.? Contented we discern 
 
 Some polished shoulder-tip or ankle-curve 
 
 Imperial, or mysterious roseate glow 
 
 Ambushed amid the many-folded vest. 
 
 Stirred by some earthly lover's amorous palm, 
 
 Who would discover the celestial features. 
 
 Ah, evermore content must we remain 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 1 45 
 
 With golden glimpses, stifling so the pangs 
 Of fruitless longings. Patience yet a while. 
 She will abide and we will mount to her. 
 Hers are the final laws of things. Strong Truth 
 His master-sickle swings and binds his sheaves 
 To bring to her the princely revenue. 
 Mild virtue plants her gardens with sweet loves, 
 To weave for her a chaplet. Poet, priest 
 And prophet, lordliest of the mortal throng, 
 Are sons of her infinity and draw 
 From her their holiness. The moons and stars, 
 Broad-flowing in eternal streams of light. 
 The fair earth with her million forces, all 
 That seems or is, subserves her cosmic will 
 And shadows forth the meaning of her soul. 
 And hand in hand appears beside her. Love." 
 
 They listened with due reverence. Then he rose 
 To lead them through the Isle, and while they walked, 
 All shared the conversation. .They discussed 
 The lofty Eld when men appeared as Gods, 
 Or paused in rapture where those spirits trod, — 
 Drunk from the honey-lip of him whose voice, 
 Swelled in perpetual warble through the grove, — 
 The shadowy sward beside Illissus, heard 
 The golden discourse, saw the godlike brows ; 
 Or mounted with the wrinkled sage who thought 
 Beside the Baltic, or that bolder man. 
 His worthy son and full co-heir of thought. 
 World-proof, and equal to his daring creed ; 
 Or with the imperial Eye of Weimar saw 
 
146 HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 The world dissolving type by type ; beheld 
 
 Milton hold firm his seraph gaze to catch 
 
 The ineffable in white mid-splendor ; or 
 
 Shakspeare fling all the portals wide of that 
 
 Serene majestic palace of his soul, 
 
 While the great world surged through in audience. 
 
 And as they moved fresh wonders of the place 
 
 Leaped into view and won their passing praise j 
 
 Delphos, Dodona, cave and temple wrought 
 
 In miniature \ a whorl of labyrinth ; 
 
 Villa or school or grot of hermitage, 
 
 Stoa or Tusculun or Academe ; 
 
 Conceits and schemes of fancy, rare and quaint. 
 
 But one lone dell most charmed them where a doe 
 
 Browsed with her fawns, and high above them towered 
 
 A mighty stag and watched the visitors, 
 
 Antler flung high and bold eye unabashed. 
 
 And at the master's call he came and ate 
 
 The herbage from his hand and leaned his head 
 
 Across his shoulder, careless of the rest. 
 
 Thence skirting a thick grove they spied the form. 
 
 Of Cora perched upon a pedestal 
 
 From which a Nymph had fallen. Wide she swung 
 
 White arms of oratorio emphasis 
 
 Above the bevy, mute in audience. 
 
 And somewhat thus her scornful treble rang. 
 
 " Trust not the easy and Ulyssean tongue, 
 
 Although his incense sweeter rise than myrrh, 
 
 Who would yoke Love to Beauty to upturn 
 
 Furrows of Mammon, blushing not to sell 
 
 Wisdom, that should be holy, and the sense 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 147 
 
 Of noble speech to basest uses. Nay, 
 
 But let us seize the Real and stand firm. 
 
 We marry not the acre nor the purse, 
 
 But something that will help our lives to be 
 
 An ampler beauty. And the canticles 
 
 Of Love, sole-sung in pianissimo, 
 
 More charm, than with a basso like a frog." 
 
 They laughed and clapped their tiny hands and 
 
 laughed : 
 They trilled a sweet " Bravissima," and laughed ; 
 And those who overheard caught up the cry, 
 And pealed a loud " Bravissima," and laughed, 
 Till half the Isle, quaffing the quick delight, 
 Laughed tipsily in bosk and bank and dell. 
 " I beg your pardon, Cora," said her Sire. 
 " You play the demagogue with grace. The part 
 Flows from you smoothly ; you are schooled in it. 
 A year of Burke, some random hours to catch 
 The trick of fulsome Ciceronian ease. 
 And you are faultless. But change first your theme. 
 This shakes the nerves of manly auditors, 
 Breathing sedition." Then her burning cheek 
 Pleaded for pity, and his heart was moved 
 In Arthur. " Rather let me hear," he said, 
 " Faction herself let loose, if she but couch 
 In such sweet tones her argument, than all 
 The homilies of duteous loyalty." 
 Whereat the warring chiefs flung down their arms, 
 And laughed and gave the reconciling kiss. 
 They talked and jested of the tables turned, 
 
148 HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 And played at shuttlecock with harmless wit, 
 Moving to lunch in arbors by the beech, 
 Where ample vases piled with golden fruit 
 Tempted the eye. And all day long they woo'd 
 Fleet pleasures, ever varied, ever sweet. 
 The maidens touched guitar in grove or bower, 
 Or warbled dainty staves of chosen songs. 
 Or, grouped in snowy band in the great Hall, 
 Blended the tones of diverse instruments. 
 Lifting in charming choir more stately rhythms, 
 Verdi, Bellini, Beethoven, Mozart ; 
 Or rocked in cushioned gondolas that swayed 
 Voluptuously from flowery bank to bank. 
 They moved upon the soft translucent flood 
 In shady circles, touched at fragrant ports, 
 And boasted to have sailed around the world. 
 At eve they parted, planning joys to come. 
 But Arthur dallied with the helm, and while 
 His vessel lingered nigh the shore, he sang : 
 
 Smile the gods, but smile benignly 
 When through life's unfolding portal 
 Ruddy from the morn above, 
 Boldly rush twin spirits mortal. 
 Meet and mingle all divinely. 
 Breathed upon by Love. 
 
 Smile the gods, but not in scorn. 
 For they burnish with new splendor 
 The bright axle of the morn. 
 Magic charms, illusions tender 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 Then they lavish, and the Graces 
 Summon from their secret places, 
 Cunning-handed aid to render. 
 
 With enchanted purple lining 
 
 All the chambers of the world, 
 
 Lo, upon the air unfurled. 
 
 Lustrous folds of light are shining. 
 
 All the vales are paved with brightness, 
 
 Every rose is dew-impearled. 
 
 And the lark's song floats for lightness. 
 
 And these twain are mute with feeling, 
 
 Hand to hand and lip to lip. 
 
 While a golden fire is stealing 
 
 Forth through every finger-tip. 
 
 And young Love, whose heavenly nature 
 
 Is compact of harmony, 
 
 So transforms their mortal feature 
 
 That each seems to either eye 
 
 Some divine immortal creature. 
 
 Slowly cease the lips from kisses, 
 Slowly droop the burning glances. 
 Slowly fade the rosy blisses. 
 Slowly break the mystic trances ; 
 Gently toward their passion warm 
 Comes the step of destiny. 
 Gently round each trembling form 
 Steals the stern and fateful arm. 
 Till they part to meet no more. 
 
 149 
 
150 HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 And between them flows a sea 
 Without ship or shore. 
 
 Smile the gods, but graciously. 
 This was thus by their decree. 
 For the dream they dreamed was surer 
 Than our waking thoughts may be, 
 And the sweetness made them purer 
 And the agony. 
 
 Closing, they greeted him with plausive cheer 
 
 And gesture, while the skiff sprang lightly forth 
 
 To a quick wind, and all through half a league 
 
 The fluttering kerchief shook from boat and shore 
 
 A thousand sweetly lingering, sad farewells. 
 
 Then Arthur's hand slept on the helm ; it seemed 
 
 Something was left behind him in the Isle. 
 
 And Paul leaned back upon the prow and watched 
 
 The glassy forehead of the westward lake 
 
 Put on its fiery turban, till he said, 
 
 " Listen ; for while we clove the little belt 
 
 Of waters and the voice of Cora lulled 
 
 So dreamily the fancy, a strange hand 
 
 Was laid upon me by the Happy Isle, 
 
 Its loneness and its gladness, and I saw, 
 
 Or seemed to see, the blissful Heroes go 
 
 And come among the shadows, and I heard, 
 
 Or seemed to hear, mild and enlarged words, 
 
 Serenest utterance of reposing souls. 
 
 Slowly the discourse gathered up to one, 
 
 Where nigh the bank Achilles with his friend, 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 Patroclus, talked. And what he seemed to say 
 I will repeat to lend our voyage wings." 
 And with soul-touching cadences he sang. 
 
 " Shot hither from the sounding bow of time, 
 
 We rust not idly upon barren sands, 
 
 But have become a greater, as we know, 
 
 Purged of the grosser principles that wrought 
 
 Aforetime unto discord, and assigned 
 
 Unto a clearer sunlight and an air 
 
 Cleansed of those stains. Patroclus, are we less, 
 
 In that we are not stirred by thoughts of war, 
 
 Entire of the oppressive turbulence 
 
 Native unto that ether, but from this 
 
 Forever alien .? Though 't is true it urged 
 
 To more of action there and taught the arm 
 
 Ampler achievement, thereby close allied 
 
 AVith mortal glory, this declares it false. 
 
 That it has fallen from us and not dared 
 
 Enter with us this region where we move 
 
 Upon harmonious paths and unto ends 
 
 Serene. For as these purple vales outshine 
 
 That loveliest Ida, this crystalline stream 
 
 Simois, and these blessed meads Troy plain, 
 
 Bruised with the tempest of a thousand hooves, 
 
 No less Achilles in the Happy Isle 
 
 Exceeds that other of the shield and speair. 
 
 Another music we have heard, our feet 
 
 Unto a nobler paean are advanced. 
 
 Now Hector's hand is careless of the sword, 
 
 No more Ulysses finds it sweet to roam. 
 
 151 
 
152 HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 And to a sceptre higher than his own 
 
 The great Atrides lifts his kingly hand. 
 
 Here is repose : not vacant of the stress 
 
 Of-noble ardors, 3^et inviolate 
 
 By the hard clamor that confused our minds. 
 
 Yea, this endeavor, having for its scope 
 
 Wisdom and Beauty in full amplitude. 
 
 Differs from that as the firm-ordered march 
 
 Of manhood from uncertain infancy. 
 
 They wander in the world of shades, not we. 
 
 All the hand compassed or the eye beheld 
 
 Were broken shadows of this mighty world 
 
 We now inhabit. There the race of men 
 
 Pursue alway fleet-footed fantasies 
 
 That lure them into perilous straits, albeit 
 
 'T is theirs to draw from weakness and mischance 
 
 The wondrous sustenance that makes them Gods. 
 
 O friend, whose dearness taught me to put by 
 
 My low abasement and resume the weight 
 
 Of that intent, from which too long divorced 
 
 My heart was cankered on the idle deck, 
 
 Though we were mortal, we are grown divine, 
 
 Nor can remembrance of our cloudy prime 
 
 Eclipse these stately splendors, nor abate 
 
 The perfect sweetness of this golden clime. 
 
 From the great Gods our state is less removed. 
 
 No longer shod with terror and dismay, 
 
 As when they mingled with the files of men, 
 
 Their awful sandals glimmer as they come. 
 
 But now, invested with a gentle grace 
 
 Of brotherhood, they touch upon our sphere, 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 153 
 
 And walk beside us through the blissful shades 
 
 In lofty converse and majestic league, 
 
 Lavish of that large knowledge which they have, 
 
 The birth and ordinance of all that is. 
 
 But hush, Patroclus, let us not forget. 
 
 Not all ignoble was our mortal hour, 
 
 Nor all unworthy to be mused upon 
 
 Within the precincts of our blessed isle. 
 
 Was it not great to hurl the gleaming spear, 
 
 While the earth trembled to the wheels of fire, 
 
 Amid the thunders of the jarring hosts ? 
 
 And not less great, sole-standing on the plain, 
 
 To watch the fiery light of Hector's eye, 
 
 And front his bold heroic enmity. 
 
 Lo, this is greater, ever with the foot 
 
 Steadfast in arduous ways, neither to pause 
 
 Nor falter, but to round the perfect sphere 
 
 Of all our attribute. Rise, let us thread 
 
 These flowery alleys to the echoing sea. 
 
 And standing close beside its shining marge, 
 
 Behold the million motions of its feet 
 
 And hear the pleasing discord of its winds j 
 
 There without sorrow, having what we have, 
 
 Remember all the distant world of men. 
 
 From which we have been lifted many an age. 
 
 Whose shores our wandering feet will press no more." 
 
 Long time in deepest hush they sailed, so much 
 The chanted pathos of his voice intense 
 Subdued, so long his solemn periods 
 Murmured from soul to soul. And Vivian, rooved 
 
154 HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 Part by the strain, but most by his own heart, 
 
 Felt a great cloud of sadness shadow him. 
 
 Musing on that resplendent Form that crowned 
 
 The golden sphere, and on her smile so sweet, 
 
 So heavenly sweet, his burning spirit yearned 
 
 For one immortal kiss from those pure lips. 
 
 And gazing long into the heavens he said, 
 
 " Dwell not too high, O spirit, in your skies j 
 
 Woo not alway the vestal lids that wink 
 
 Upon the silver margin of the air. 
 
 Nor yet the holy calm of Hesper's eye. 
 
 At morn I saw you on the orient brink 
 
 Bathing amid the surf of golden seas ; 
 
 All day you hid in links of fleecy mail, 
 
 The armor of the mild, blue-bosomed day ; 
 
 O then come now beneath the purple zone. 
 
 That sunders earth from heaven, and meet me here. 
 
 Oped are the gateways of beseeching eyes. 
 
 Come down \ come in ; and flush with ruddy beams 
 
 My heart through all its chambers." And he paused 
 
 From a too brimming heart, then sadly sang ; 
 
 Behold, she comes from the myrtle land, 
 Slowly floating through evening roses. 
 The light of her smile serene and bland, 
 Like a star, fresh-blown and young, reposes j 
 And before, the blossoming heavens expand, 
 And behind, the cloven splendor closes. 
 
 Ever and ever she floats to me. 
 Under the starlight, under the moon ; 
 
155 
 
 HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 My heart is high with ecstacy, 
 It beats, ' I will die with her soon ; ' 
 And the skies are shaken with melody, 
 And the stars grow pale in a swoon. 
 
 — I care not if it be death or not, 
 For my heart is cold in its place, 
 Since she, ah God, since she forgot. 
 To wear the smile on her face ; 
 The day will be sunless, the night a blot. 
 Till she send me some token of grace. 
 
 " So sad ? " said Paul. " I hoped the honied chat 
 And tender eyes had been a passing Lethe." 
 " My son," the Master said, " the happier hour 
 Waves o'er you hands of blessing, though unseen. 
 Fail not in courage. Never was it known 
 That any soul of man intensely yearned 
 For Beauty and acquaintance with the Light, 
 And God denied it him." 
 
 The end was nigh. 
 The waters moaned. The glooming cliff flung out 
 A reef of darkness, and the swelling wind 
 Drew deeper lamentations from the pines. 
 That wailed like sad Cassandra, from her tower 
 Looking at midnight out to Samothrace, 
 Thinking of the dark ruin that would come. 
 They disembarked, and looking backward, saw. 
 Across the silver borders of the eve, 
 The battle-clouds move up in frowning ranks 
 To the loud bugle of the western wind ; 
 
156 HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 Pennon and plume touched with a dusky glare 
 Of combat. And the Lake cast up a cry 
 Of fierce defiance, shook her myriad crests 
 In sullen foam, blew far and wide the trump 
 Of battle, summoning all her hosts to arms. 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES, 
 
 157 
 
 VI. 
 
 Central axis, pole of pole, 
 Central orb and goal of goal, 
 Worship, to whose sovereign end 
 All the spirit's uses tend. 
 Taught of her high mystery, 
 Perfect will the manchild be. 
 Not with sorrow, not with moan 
 Comes the soul unto her own ; 
 Not with sounding steps of thunder, 
 Not with flaming looks of fire. 
 But with calm delight and wonder, 
 Simple hope and sweet desire. 
 Then through all the motions stealing 
 Of the manifold existence. 
 Ever lifting, soothing, healing. 
 Love attunes each thought and feeling 
 Unto patience and persistence. 
 
 And the prophet is the voice 
 That shall bid the world rejoice. 
 Youngest, eldest child of light, 
 Charioted on beams of morning. 
 Flings to the wind his banner bright, 
 Sounds the trump of cheer and warning. 
 
158 HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 And his swift aerial passage 
 Nations catch with eager eyes, 
 Wake the earth and shake the skies 
 While he speaks the holy message. 
 Rich his mien in charity, 
 Throbs his heart with ecstasy j 
 His eyes are wells of mildest fire 
 Whence radiant issuings inspire 
 Deep souls with kindlings of divine desire. 
 Move his lips with breathings warm. 
 Rhythms woven of sunlight and of storm : 
 From God's own armory a sword 
 Enclothes his thigh, the flaming Word. 
 
 From wells of truth crystalline, cold. 
 
 He drinks, the passionless calm springs 
 
 That without mortal murmurings 
 
 Retain their heavenly splendors old. 
 
 Few drink ; too silken-lipped to brave 
 
 The fierceness of the unpiteous wave, 
 
 Parching with rigors manifold 
 
 Their craven souls to bondage sold. 
 
 Long used to wine in pearl and gold. 
 
 All steep and alpine loftiness, 
 
 The mountain-folds that neighboring lie 
 
 The smile of God's infinity. 
 
 He scales, to win his holiness. 
 
 And there those strong-eyed fountains glow 
 
 Whereof he gives to men below. 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 159 
 
 Half-way into a yellow afternoon 
 
 The day had slipp'd, when from his bench the Sire 
 
 Awoke from slumber, and awaking, said, 
 
 " My children, it is shown to me from heaven 
 
 That when to-morrow eve the vesper star 
 
 Shall totter on the verge of the dim world, 
 
 My spirit will be loosened from its bonds. 
 
 Once more from yonder mount would I behold 
 
 The footsteps of this Lustre. Words I have 
 
 To utter, well befitting you to hear. 
 
 And I must lean upon you, for my limbs 
 
 Shrink from the task." And all arose, and two 
 
 Round either neck lifted an aged arm. 
 
 And slowly and with many pauses, wound 
 
 From ledge to ledge and won a shoulder'd crest 
 
 Of plain-supporting mountain, which the sun 
 
 Smote from his place of sinking. Here they sat 
 
 And marked the great Day vanish from his paths, 
 
 Trailing his brightness, till the western star 
 
 Opened his golden lids and shot a shaft, 
 
 Golden, of clear aerial-tempered light 
 
 That drew their gazing. And the East, disrobed 
 
 Of all her purples, placed upon her brow 
 
 A dewy brilliant, orbing its delight 
 
 In lucid tremblings. Overhead the stars 
 
 With timid hands unbarred their lattices. 
 
 And leaning from dark casements watched the world. 
 
 The motion and the murmur of the day 
 
 Grew slumberous in the meadows, and around 
 
 Uprose the drowsy plumes and floating down 
 
 Of Twilight, steering from her orient home. 
 
i6o HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 They saw the granges nesthng in the gloom, 
 Which deepened, and the lowing of the kine 
 Touched faintly on their height. A perfect Day, 
 Strong, fair and wise, sank gently to his rest, 
 The kingly purpose of his going forth 
 Achieved through golden lavishment of love. 
 Soft-footed evening stole across the hills. 
 And passing, left the land with reverence still. 
 And all that toiled beneath the law of light, 
 Slept, lulled with balm from the distilling palm 
 Of the dim-smiling Silence, friend to all. 
 
 Then from the skies fell down an influence 
 
 Mysterious and ethereal, which crowned 
 
 The world with mystic beauty and shot awe 
 
 Into their pulses, and into their eyes 
 
 Deep love and worship ; but their lips were mute. 
 
 For either spirit was afar, beguiled 
 
 By shining thought along the happy paths 
 
 Of meditation. Everywhere there dwelt 
 
 Upon the outer and the inner world 
 
 A wondrous wealth divine, that woke to life 
 
 The soul's supremest faculties, and dipped 
 
 The peaceful heart in a celestial dew 
 
 Of infinite love. The essence of all forms, 
 
 The spirit of all beauty and all truth. 
 
 That which creates and moves in silence all 
 
 The powers of being, without name or form, 
 
 Divine and sole, came to them through the soul 
 
 And with them for a time abode, and they 
 
 Were speechless, motionless with holy fear. 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES. i6i 
 
 O who would voice these golden mysteries, 
 Yielding unto the trumpet-clang of speech 
 The kissing of the human and divine ! 
 
 And the age-stricken Master smiled and said, 
 
 " O when beneath the guidance of the sun 
 
 The grievous tasks are ended, and the hand 
 
 Completes its duteous offering of toil 
 
 To the inexorable Life, how sweet. 
 
 Quitting the weapons of our exercise. 
 
 While all the vales of heaven are calm with stars 
 
 And earth has smoothed the wrinkles from her face, 
 
 To slip the grosser thought and sally out 
 
 Through those eternal regions where the soul 
 
 May walk with Beauty, undeterr'd ! Alway 
 
 The mild and meditative eve inspires 
 
 Joyful devotion and refreshing hopes, 
 
 Kindles the spiritual fires anew, 
 
 Dimm'd by the light of day, and stills with prayer 
 
 The carking labors of the mind, that yield 
 
 Too oft a hundred-fold of pain. All hail ! 
 
 Once more, ye heavenly ministers of love, 
 
 Slow-pacing constellations, steadfast suns. 
 
 Thick-clustering signs, and willful lights that rove 
 
 Meteoric, bright cars and burning wheels 
 
 Whereon are borne the forward-sloping skies 
 
 Upon their paths eternal, but unworn ! 
 
 Precious and noble is the perfect hour 
 
 Of contemplation ; and to fly the thought 
 
 Where solemn groves maintain a reverence ; 
 
 Aisles which the muffled feet of silence tread j 
 
1 62 HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 Silence, the sweetest singer, taught to sweep 
 
 The grand choir-harp of God with fingers sure ; 
 
 Sweeter than fame and the wide-echoing name, 
 
 Mild nurse of purity and cheerful thoughts 
 
 Dear in themselves, spurring to arduous tasks 
 
 Wise, temperate and discerning to be just. 
 
 How gently from the hundred fading hills 
 
 And from the windings of a hundred vales 
 
 Flows the cool peacefulness in murmuring waves, 
 
 Sweeter to me than stateliest harmonies ! 
 
 Love's voice falls to us from the cloud, his smile 
 
 Sits on the forehead of the rising star, 
 
 All round the margent of the shadowy world 
 
 His presence lingers. O my children, know 
 
 That all things which for fair completion ask 
 
 Are close about you \ close about you moves 
 
 All that you may become, and from all heavens 
 
 Falls in clear smiles fulfilment of your prayers. 
 
 And what is yours seek to possess and love, 
 
 Instructed that the great gods laughingly 
 
 Sowed it through all the elements, to prove 
 
 If you deserve the larger destiny. 
 
 O not in knowledge is our end. Her birth 
 
 Is human j she is manifold in change j 
 
 A heavy cloud that struggles nigh the world. 
 
 The sport of heedless gales. She drifts and drifts. 
 
 She has to give but pangs and fears and tears, 
 
 Of that great calm we seek, incapable. 
 
 But wisdom is eternal ; from the brain 
 
 Of the Infinite her mighty being sprang. 
 
 She lodges in the soul the wondrous seed 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 163 
 
 That cannot perish, breaking into flower 
 Of heavenly magnificence." 
 He breathed : 
 And they in stillness sat until he rose 
 And bade them lead him to a mountain tarn, 
 Some roods to westward. And they led him there, 
 And found a little pinnace moored, wherein 
 They entered. Then he said, " Strike oar and steer 
 For yonder island tufted with great pines." 
 And they struck oar and steered and brushed the isle 
 With slippery ribs, and disembarking moved 
 Through belts of gloom into an open cirque, 
 Where massy trees, ranged round in ample rings, 
 As if from solemn fancies, shadowed forth 
 A temple's nave, crowned with a dome of stars. 
 And the great-hearted man of many years 
 Gazed round him with a look of awe, and said, 
 " Here in my anguished hour there came to me 
 A heavenly vision upon wings of peace, 
 And perched upon my spirit like a dove." 
 And while the silent moments lapsed, his eye 
 Seemed to take root in heaven, as if his heart 
 Would drink to ecstasy the crystal light, 
 Until with lifted voice impassionate 
 Through all its tremor'd age he said to them ; 
 " We sit within the garden of the Night. 
 Around us sweep the harmonies of God 
 On viewless and inaudible wings, the flood 
 Of that unending hope which is our life. 
 Eternity is with us in the soul. 
 The great God in the garden speaks with us. 
 
1 64 HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 I hear the holy sweetness of a rhythm 
 
 Which is not of this hour, but steals far off 
 
 Along the luminous marge of other days. 
 
 Oft have I wept, fearing its voice was lost 
 
 Forever. But to-night yon seraph star, 
 
 Touching his harp between his burning wings 
 
 Restores to me the soul of all the past. 
 
 And I become a wave among the waves 
 
 Of the melodious mystery whereof 
 
 We are a portion. Happy is the man, 
 
 Whose soul the floods of the deep-murmuring Life 
 
 Fondle in everlasting arms. O hour 
 
 Divine, when time lets fall her mask, and stands 
 
 Beside the hoar and old eternities. 
 
 Meek daughter ! " 
 
 And a little space he paused j 
 Then turning unto Vivian said, " My son, 
 You have been taught of nature, man, and world, 
 And of the law severe. But I, this hour, 
 Would name to you a mightier name than these, 
 Would speak of somewhat higher than all law, 
 Of that which cancels law and lays it by ; 
 None other this than Love, the operant God, 
 Colleague of Beauty, God as immanent. 
 Love is the spirit of the Visible, 
 And works by glad surrender, lowliness \ 
 Unselfs the self, thereby a greater self. 
 What hand shall teach the lyre to yield a strain 
 Freighted with meanings equal to the worth 
 Of this, the one divinest sovereign law, 
 The light, the glory, and the unity, 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 165 
 
 The Highest. In the beckoning of a star, 
 
 He beckonsj and when buds the folded morn, 
 
 Buds, nor the less in gloomy wombs of night 
 
 And central tides of fire, guides and impels. 
 
 By him the rose is happy and does blow, 
 
 The fearless brook slips on his dappled floors. 
 
 The beltjgd bee buries his burnished thighs 
 
 In meadowy sweets, and the low-luting wind 
 
 Tunes the warm valley to his cooling strain. 
 
 By him the dev/y lark is fed with mirth ; 
 
 By him the lone dove wanders till he finds 
 
 A cooing answering to his cooing, low 
 
 And softer than his own. By him the stars 
 
 Have twinn'd their golden circles, and their feet 
 
 Are rich in melody. By him all might 
 
 Makes concord v/ith all weakness, not destroys 3 
 
 By him the One flowers to the Manifold, 
 
 By him the Manifold is but as One. 
 
 His feet are shod with music, from him flow 
 
 All subtle-paced harmonies that work 
 
 Through life and nature. All the issuings, 
 
 That touch the souls of men with holy flame, 
 
 With old and simple sufferance for the True, 
 
 And warfare with enthroned forms of ill, 
 
 He feeds. And the slow bettering of the world, — 
 
 That fond and patient creed of steadfast men, — 
 
 Is Love, self-orbing. Throned within the soul 
 
 A king, all pulses of the active life, 
 
 All motion outward, aiming at the world, 
 
 All work, all speech, all gesture do receive 
 
 A sacred bias from his sceptre, he 
 
1 66 HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 With mild controlling currents tempering all 
 
 To harmonize with nature, law, and God, 
 
 To renovate, inform, expand, exalt. 
 
 He knows the canticles of Light, himself 
 
 A melody, a wisdom, a sunlight, 
 
 A beauty, a divinity, a joy. 
 
 Young, glowing, ripe, and mild and strong and fair, 
 
 One child of God, the first and latest born. 
 
 " Prophets say well that one true man saves all. 
 
 Whoso has utterly fulfilled the law. 
 
 Leaves it to all men a divine bequest. 
 
 Thus Love, who, in that God is beautiful, 
 
 Adores Him, is the Saviour of the world. 
 
 For he not hears command, nor then obeys, 
 
 Commanded, but unto himself remains 
 
 Sole origin and end, and sole delight. 
 
 Much have you heard of the individual soul. 
 
 Its singleness and its resistance, life 
 
 Self center'd. But I bring you tidings now 
 
 Of blithe outpouring, large abandonment. 
 
 Of sacred festivals and mirth divine. 
 
 My tongue would utter that majestic hour. 
 
 The jubilee, the rapture, summing bliss, 
 
 When, all divested of its mortal husk, 
 
 The sin, the shame, the anguish cast aside, 
 
 The soul with throbs of harmony shall blend,. 
 
 With all its comprehensive faculties. 
 
 With all its pathos of sublime desire, 
 
 Shall at its amplest blend with God. O then, 
 
 Time and her shining hours fade quite away. 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 167 
 
 Space and the corporal frame of Nature flee, 
 
 And all the opacous garment of the soul 
 
 Slips into nothing, and the jarring heart, 
 
 This crackling faggot of mad contraries, 
 
 A spheric shape of tranquil flame, moves up 
 
 To the bosom of Light. And this may come to pass 
 
 On earth, and this the babes and sucklings know. 
 
 My son, not all have stood upon this mount. 
 
 Nor any, alway ; but remembrance dear 
 
 Of what it was, of what was heard and seen, 
 
 Will keep us, and to human fashionings 
 
 Extend the largess of a grace divine j 
 
 Will rest with consecrating liberal force 
 
 Perennial, on every show of life. 
 
 Transforming into dignity and worth, 
 
 Winnowing from all endeavor what is base." 
 
 And while they sat revolving his high parle, 
 Slowly arose the sweetness of a voice 
 Soft, deep with passion tempered into joy ; 
 " O evening, dear because the fight is fought, 
 O crowning hour of hours that have been damp 
 With drops of wrestling, O selected hour 
 From all eternity, to me to bring 
 Celestial benediction, be thou blest. 
 Blessed be thou forever ! Worldly hope. 
 Nor lower thought than worship, shall profane 
 Thy glorious moments, while my days are mine." 
 Then Vivian told serenely and in tones 
 That ever gathered up the lyric force 
 Of a majestic spiritual hymn. 
 
1 68 HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 His aspect kindled from the inner heaven, 
 
 Of warfare urged through dim disastrous days, 
 
 And how the grim hostility lost ground. 
 
 He gaining, till at last he lifted up 
 
 The paean, having won the victory. 
 
 For in this very hour, even while he heard 
 
 The Master speaking, there from heaven fell 
 
 A brightness like a falling star, and smote 
 
 His soul with blindness for a time, whereon 
 
 He was as glad and peaceful as a babe. 
 
 "And now," he said, "great Life, the manifold, 
 
 Takes on a cosmic oneness, musical. 
 
 And shapes the mazes of her thousand paths 
 
 To one sure law. O now the world is fair, - 
 
 God near, and the inspired life of man 
 
 Made fresh and true, heroic, beautiful. 
 
 O peace is ever sweet to labored men ; 
 
 The peace, that draws its sweetness from the veins 
 
 Of high fulfilment, nobly finished tasks ; 
 
 The peace, that, like a maiden, buckles on 
 
 New-forged armor for the wars to come." 
 
 Mildly his utterance fell upon their ears. 
 And blessed as a gentle summer shower. 
 For deeply in his spirit wrought a strength 
 That mellowed all his thought and every word, 
 And smote their minds with genial sympathy. 
 His bosom harbored an enduring power 
 Of gladness, for upon him Peace had dropped 
 Her robe, and Love had countervailed the world. 
 And over his transfigured lineaments 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 169 
 
 Lingered a bland, serene, harmonious light. 
 
 With joy the Master listened, and he raised 
 
 With travail both his aged hands and said, 
 
 " My son, I bless you for your constancy. 
 
 O peace is ever sweet to labored men. 
 
 Now is the final boon of earth to me ; 
 
 Long have I waited for this happy hour. 
 
 Solaced and 'stablished that before my death 
 
 It falls. For, Vivian, I have loved you well ; 
 
 My heart has brooded o'er you, and from you 
 
 These darkening eyes have taken half their light ; 
 
 In whom I seemed to find an echo clear 
 
 Of mine own youthful hour. And I believe 
 
 That for the witnessing of this last grace 
 
 Has Heaven deferr'd an earlier falling-ofF. 
 
 My son, receive my blessing." And the youth 
 
 Knelt down beneath the unsteadfast hands and wept ; 
 
 And the great-hearted Father blessed him there. 
 
 Then when his soul was calmer grown, he said, 
 
 " Ah, unto faltering eyes, now half eclipsed 
 
 Under the shadow of that ampler world, 
 
 How beautiful the footsteps of the youth, 
 
 Who, armed with daring thoughts and lofty hopes, 
 
 Reverence, persistence and obedient love. 
 
 Through the dim courses of bewilder'd men, 
 
 Voices that would enchant, affright or mock, 
 
 Droops not the eyelid, married in his gaze 
 
 To the fair vision that ensnared his soul. 
 
 And like a splendor from the inmost heaven, 
 
 Illumines and sustains. But ye are yet 
 
 The sons of dewy morning in her prime 
 
170 
 
 HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 Of cool slant-glances from thick-fringed lids. 
 
 Her blushing mien will wither in the eye 
 
 Of heightening day, the torrid world will crack 
 
 With fiery pangs beneath the front of noon, 
 
 And the mild evening usher in her balm 
 
 With healing lavishment of dews. Not less 
 
 Must ye bear up through all, and must maintain 
 
 Your singleness and calmness. Hardihood 
 
 Will spring from wrestling with the stubborn years. 
 
 Put on the thev/s of labor and of joy ; 
 
 Strength, which alone in nature may forecast. 
 
 Regard me, while I utter what may aid 
 
 To raise the future to his lawful height, 
 
 And teach your needs. The son draws from the sire 
 
 Ofttimes like fortune with like blood ; so ye. 
 
 Seeing ye name me father in your souls, 
 
 Like fortune with like wisdom. This be yours, 
 
 As part of somewhat ampler to be yours. 
 
 Yoke wisdom unto noble ends of use. 
 
 'T is much to know ; but the more daring eye 
 
 Not pauses till it speaks a proud ' Behold ! ' 
 
 And has achieved in visual lineament 
 
 That which the mind engendered in itself. 
 
 The act, when born, will blend with you anew 
 
 To yield you more of being, which ye seek. 
 
 He cannot shoot a perfect ray on earth, 
 
 The sum of all whose days has been a thought. 
 
 Ideal then is idol, not being put 
 
 To use, and elemented with the blood 
 
 Of the world. Yet what the loftier faith attains, 
 
 Hold fast with calmness and unspeaking lips. 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 171 
 
 Not doubting. Thus the lowest act will know 
 
 The highest purpose, and to it be tuned. 
 
 But dwarf not to a blind mechanic round 
 
 Of hard performance the majestic scope 
 
 Of Duty ; knowing that she is a star 
 
 Within you, to encircle you with light ; 
 
 A flower, that, by divinest instincts moved, 
 
 Chooses from all the world what best it bears, 
 
 And fashions it with light, creative hands, 
 
 To her own law of beauty. Work your work. 
 
 The world throws open everywhere wide doors 
 
 Of invitation. Never can she spare 
 
 The toiling hand, the pondering brain, the bright, 
 
 High-shooting fancies of her burning youth. 
 
 But give her of your best, your best of best ; 
 
 Partly defeated in your victories, 
 
 Yet ever victors in your vanquishments. 
 
 " And Arthur, you perchance will lay your hand 
 Upon the neck of Turbulence, and tame 
 His boisterous sport, and ride him to your will j 
 And where the smoking bosoms of the world 
 Shake to the tug of mighty enmities, 
 Will dip into the thunder, and take part 
 With God in forging the august event. 
 This hope is well : and having strongly felt 
 The master-bias unto action, keep 
 Endeavor pointed to his lawful goal. 
 And be not wrenched to sordid uses, born 
 And cherished by the lean, invidious thought ; 
 Heroic ardors turned to poisonous smoke. 
 
172 
 
 HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 Nor hope within the easy vale to find 
 The heavenly flower that blooms in Alpine series, 
 Nor yet hope to divorce wisdom fi'om love j 
 But seek to temper your achieving hands 
 With reverence. 
 
 " And Paul, your heart is tuned 
 To studious moods, and the exalted hour 
 Of calm and high communings, the intense 
 Impassioned spiriting of the lonely thought. 
 Happy, my son, if life shall leave you free 
 To the delightful, ever gentle power 
 Of these majestic duties, which we love 
 To wait upon ; dearest of earthly tasks, 
 Drawing us like a star that girds her soul 
 With loveliness in skies of crystalline. 
 Gladly the hand bends to its proper task. 
 Gladly the forward mind forecasts the hope 
 Of liberal labor, reaching out to all 
 The goals of wisdom by the chosen paths 
 Of Beauty, and her younger brother. Love. 
 Sweet is the golden vacancy, whose hours 
 Of generous toil spread out the willing soul, 
 Like grapes upon the cancel'd vine, that fill 
 Their veins with purple from the sun. To you 
 The summer skies will yield, with happy grace, 
 Largess of mellow leisure ; the cool morn, 
 With swift vivific touch, will fire the breast 
 With genial courage, and the birds and bees 
 Will keep you merry through laborious days. 
 Though many tempting paths invite the foot. 
 Woo the one Spirit of creative thought, 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 Who comes most lovely in the shining vest 
 Of poesy. Wander with her, in heart 
 Childlike, and what she will reveal, await 
 With burning soul of large expectancy. 
 
 '' You Vivian, whom the riddle of the time, 
 Has sorely plagued with nimble Protean pranks, 
 Eluding capture, all my being moves 
 To bless you. O, it is a deep delight 
 When winter, vanquish'd by the breath of spring, 
 Strikes all his tents and turns his host to flee, 
 Wandering in vernal fields to find a flower 
 Budding on some warm ledge ; a deeper joy 
 To sailor's eyes, long mocked by cloud and surge. 
 In the calm hour that tells of storm abating, 
 High in some glossy folding of the sky, 
 To catch a star serene in grace and power j 
 But sweeter far than these, when the young soul, 
 Sunk in the abysmal gulfs of self-distrust. 
 Catching some gleam of what is good and noble. 
 Shakes off the vapors from his wings, and rolls 
 The darkness up before him, till he moves 
 High up through azure plains of light and love. 
 My son, lose not, I pray you, memory 
 Of him you spake with in your hour of gloom j 
 For from its lifted home my soul will peer, 
 If this may be, and mark you as you move. 
 Great is your office, if your hands fail not 
 In broad outreachings and the secret bond 
 Creative j not all captive to the world. 
 Nor yet unto transcendent glimpses, all. 
 
 173 
 
174 
 
 HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 You shall lay hand on both and make them one ; 
 
 By lifting up and luring down, shall blend 
 
 The diverse elements in marriage sweet. 
 
 And this is greatest. These two strains, when fused 
 
 In harmony, are the full life of man." 
 
 Long time all hearts were hush, all lips were dumb, 
 Until he rose and said, " Rise, let us go. 
 My words are told. Soft slumber laps the world. 
 And through the misty gleam the muffled sounds 
 Float slumberous, and the downy airs have fanned 
 My eyelids into languor. Let us hence. 
 Death waits me in the valleys, and I go 
 To meet him as a lover to his bride." 
 
 And they arose and passed the wave and stood 
 
 Upon the margin of the mount, and saw 
 
 The moon lift her wide-smiling argent up 
 
 From darkness. And with pencils soft she touched 
 
 The broken land, north, south, east, west, and drew 
 
 Slow feature after feature into life. 
 
 Dim were the master's eyes with tears, the while 
 
 He gazed, in solemn farewell long, the paths 
 
 Where from his cradle he had gone and come ; 
 
 Paths which his mortal steps should know no more. 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES, 
 
 ^75 
 
 VIL 
 
 When the good man dies, 
 
 Nature feels the drain \ 
 Heights and depths do sympathize, 
 
 Suns and planets wane. 
 
 When the good man dies, 
 Nations feel the anguish j 
 
 Thrones are loosened, tumults rise, 
 Hearts of heroes languish.' 
 
 Who shall take his place ? 
 
 None, for none is equal. 
 Nature not repeats the grace 
 
 Through her endless sequel. 
 
 But our fates abide. 
 
 Goodly spheres as any. 
 Would'st secure thy circle ride, 
 
 Be but one in many. 
 
 Perfect in age and looking for his end. 
 The Master sat before the cottage door 
 
Ij6 HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 Among his kindred in the vale, what hour 
 
 The day ebbed slowly from his silent shores. 
 
 On one side sat his son ; on one, the wife ; 
 
 And at his feet upon her twisted stool, 
 
 Edith, who soothed his seam'd and shrivePd hand 
 
 In palms of fairy silkiness ; her heart 
 
 Afraid and sorrowful. Not far, the Three 
 
 Were stretched upon the grass, from time to time 
 
 Looking on the benignant face they loved, 
 
 Best loved of men and most of men revered. 
 
 It was an antique chair in which he sat, 
 
 Massy and ample, eased with purple softness. 
 
 Its cushions lined with homely broideries quaint. 
 
 In spires of polished oak high towered the back, 
 
 And round the carven arms the lion's mane 
 
 Had bristled on his neck a hundred years. 
 
 He loved the chair, an heirloom of the house 
 
 While two stout sires made white their locks and died. 
 
 At his desire the son had wheeled it forth, 
 
 Creaking from every joint, as full of groans 
 
 As some grey servitor when haply forced 
 
 For a light task to quit his chimney-nook. 
 
 " Fetch it," he said. " My father died in it. 
 
 And in it, his ; who over the great seas 
 
 Brought it from Scotland when his heart was young. 
 
 Fling wide the lattice, Edith. Let him look 
 
 On the last hour of whom, a babe, he blessed." 
 
 And she flung wide the lattice, and they saw 
 
 The great ancestor peering from his frame j 
 
 The port of some bold hunter in the dawn 
 
 Of Freedom, striding in the van of things. 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES, 177 
 
 And while they sat perusing his ripe age, 
 
 He lifted from dim eyes their lids and said, 
 
 " My children, it behooves me to pronounce 
 
 What last I may ; for I grow weaker now 
 
 From pulse to pulse, and can perceive the soul 
 
 Begin to stir his plumes for the great flight. 
 
 Ah, since in yonder dell the lonely grave 
 
 Was rounded, and we planted there the rose, , 
 
 And missed the perfect fragrance from our lives 
 
 Of her that was your mother, now a saint, 
 
 The apple of my age is ripe to fall. 
 
 Much am I maim'd, not being strong to take, 
 
 Nor wise to give. The years, undoing all 
 
 They fashioned long ago with many a blow, 
 
 Have wrinkled the firm members and bound fast 
 
 The will unto the unrevolving wheel 
 
 Of his own purposes, and milked the heart 
 
 Of those unsleeping currents which it loved. 
 
 And yet, and yet another light has shone. 
 
 The eve too has its purple with the morn. 
 
 Glimpses are mine that never could have pierced 
 
 The smoke and tumult of assiduous days. 
 
 I am not all forsaken ; for I catch 
 
 Some happy visions of an ampler youth 
 
 In this most tranquil mirror of my age. 
 
 And looking down from this grey verge on that 
 
 Which these spent hands have handled, who shall 
 
 say 
 That all was sorrow ? Cheated oft of hope, 
 Bruis'd by defeats and inly-wrung with pangs, 
 Life has not been a burthen. Though the heart 
 
l'78 HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 Has talked with her contrarious forms, has drunk 
 
 Her nectar and her gall, and known her moods 
 
 Of anger and of dalliance, yet through all, 
 
 Though seeming, near, ill passion or worse loss, 
 
 Nought that not hatch'd an afterseed of use. 
 
 Nothing was vain and nothing overmuch. 
 
 But wondrously o'er all was moved a hand, 
 
 A rounding hand beneficent, and rich 
 
 In compensation ; and the good they took. 
 
 The hours brought back a more celestial good. 
 
 Thus what the soul achieves so far avails 
 
 As gendering oblivion of itself, 
 
 A symbol and perpetual furtherance. 
 
 And if there be what has not been repaid, 
 
 I wait for larger cycles : it will come. 
 
 For all the fallings-oif we suffer here 
 
 Attain their rich completion as we move 
 
 From flight to flight, from star to star, far up' 
 
 The vast serene of never-ending being. 
 
 'T is Love that perfects ; his the summing law. • 
 
 And Love is but the dealing out to each 
 
 His share of Beauty, that by single forms 
 
 Made perfect, each according to its scope, 
 
 The universe may know its harmony. 
 
 The manifold be sweetly turned to one. 
 
 My children, ye shall fix your hope on Love, 
 
 On Him firm base your faith, to Him shall turn 
 
 Your thoughts at morn and evening and midday, 
 
 And worship Him in secret when ye kneel." 
 
 A while he paused for feebleness, then spake j 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES, 
 
 " Ye, on whose brow the full meridian glow 
 Of life reposes in maturest grace, 
 Telling of cheerful triumphs, bounteous hearts, 
 Ye have not err'd in choosing simple tasks, 
 Thoughts unperplext by balancings of ill, 
 Not tempted. Strive as ye are purely wont. 
 Finish the purposes ye work upon. 
 And it shall be that if ye do no wrong, 
 But taste the world with a wise temperance, 
 And open to each duty when it knocks, 
 Conserving with the holy, holy ends, 
 And know the seasons, careful to provide 
 What coming days will ask for, ye will reach 
 Serenely and with many thoughts of joy 
 This brink on which I totter. 
 " O sweet child, 
 Edith, my darling, in whose soul I hear. 
 That rarest mortal strain, wherein I took 
 Chiefest delight, prolonged, and those divine 
 Numbers into your secret being wrought j 
 To whom each day is an Eolian change 
 Into a sweeter music, and the world 
 Teems like a magic censer Vvrhence the joys 
 Leap forth in gold and purple, may you win 
 All that the spotless heart can prophesy. 
 But know that life takes color from the eye, 
 And the great world smiles with perpetual charm, 
 Because beneath the lovely iris spread 
 Of your own nature. Ever keep it pure, 
 As God is pure. I know that in your ears 
 Sounds the new thunder of a mighty sea. 
 
 179 
 
l8o HIGHLAND RAMBLES, 
 
 Whereof you know not wholly, though it seem 
 
 Within you, partly. Long time have I marked 
 
 The lucent eyelid curtain-in a soul 
 
 Perplext with its own womanhood. Fear not, 
 
 O darling daughter, but divinely trust 
 
 The beautiful impulsions of your heart, 
 
 The calm and holy visions of your mind. 
 
 Great Nature has no more beloved task 
 
 Then to complete so fair a handiwork. 
 
 And him whom you have chosen, while you breathe, 
 
 Trust wholly. For mine eye has seen his soul. 
 
 His inmost soul, that it is noble. Paul, 
 
 O love her greatly. Let no ill divide. 
 
 And may Love drink from the celestial fount 
 
 Of beauty, which is clearness in the soul. 
 
 And feed him on new virtues and fresh graces, 
 
 The rose of candor and the bud of hope." 
 
 Now from the altar of the fading day 
 The embers shot a dying flicker faint ; 
 And all his spirit mounted, hovering 
 About the brightening face of that fair star, 
 Lovliest star the jewel- wearing west 
 Puts on anight, the mildest-eyed, that lay 
 Within the elbow of a cloud and smiled 
 Sweet as a babe ; whose glow for the last time 
 He drank to feed his heart and soothe his eyes. 
 And cheerly fell his accents, as he said, 
 " O mine own star, belov'd above all orbs 
 That pace the courts of God with brows serene. 
 Burn in me and inspire me as I die. 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES. l8i 
 
 Shoot down a summoning welcome that will tempt 
 This halting spirit through the door it holds 
 Ajar. For largely from your fount I took 
 In days that felt the shadow and the pain, 
 Trusting your hallowed comfort, winning thence 
 Constant thanksgiving and perennial calm. 
 Yea, I have known you as a guardian force, 
 A genius by my side through good and ill, 
 My star of fate. No weariness makes wan 
 Your glorious eye, nor stains of travel mar 
 Your garments. I am gladdened and renewed 
 By this proud port and unabated will." 
 
 He bowed his head and many memories. 
 
 Saddest and sweetest of his mortal hour. 
 
 Came to him through the falling twilight, touched. 
 
 And touching, like to wrestling angels, loosed 
 
 His sinews. And the group that watched him feared 
 
 His end was on him, but he said, " Not yet." 
 
 And somewhat his cheek brightened as he spoke, 
 
 '* My sons, newly adopted, 't is my hope 
 
 My mountains have been liberal hosts to you. 
 
 Come often, when my bones are turned to dust. 
 
 They will not fail in bounty, and will wake 
 
 Some fond remembrance of my love for you, 
 
 A solace and a strengthening when ye 
 
 Go down into the semblance of the world 
 
 And thread the misty alleys of your lives. 
 
 Anon the transient lustre of his cheek 
 Died into pallor native to his years. 
 
i82 HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 All waited breathless, and he lifted up 
 
 The trembling hands and, faltering somewhat, 
 
 breathed 
 An ample benediction, as beseemed 
 So old and great a heart. An hour they sat 
 In utter stillness there. But when in heaven 
 The vesper star was tottering on the verge 
 Of the dim world, his spirit on its perch 
 A little fluttered. Faintly then he said, 
 " Farewell : my soul is summoned. I must go. 
 Edith, my darling, kiss me." And she rose 
 And stooped upon his breast and kissed his lips 
 That gave no answering greeting, but were chill. 
 Yet in his eyes she caught, though faint and far, 
 The smiling of his ghost, now half withdrawn 
 From the slow-darkening windows of the sense. 
 Then she sat down and hid her face and wept. 
 Her sorrow deepened and she wept aloud. 
 And when the dying signal of the star 
 Shone out and vanished, to his breast he bowed 
 His face, all clothed with august quietude, 
 Seeming to hide serenest ponderings. 
 And on the bosom of unspeakable Love 
 His spirit drooped its shining head like it, 
 That perfect flower, bending its petals fair, 
 Heavy with light, stooping from weight of dreams, 
 Upon the glowing parterre of the west, 
 Hesper. 
 
 All stilly wept, till Vivian rose. 
 And looking on his lifeless master said, 
 " O thou great Heart ! O largest, wisest, best. 
 
HIGHLAND RAMBLES. 
 
 183 
 
 Most royal-fashioned, godlike man of men ! 
 
 The world was never great enough for you, 
 
 And this vast love that templed in you here. 
 
 But ever you conversed with loftier worlds ; 
 
 Melodious spheres and fairer than our stars, 
 
 Clothed with a light not born from any sun, 
 
 But which creates itself from year to year. 
 
 Without you I had never known the worth, 
 
 The loveliness and majesty of man. 
 
 Without you I had never known of Love. 
 
 O holy be your ashes and the spot 
 
 Holy, where they shall rest in peace, among 
 
 The flowers that knew you and the birds that knew, 
 
 And these fair hills that loved you as their son. 
 
 And often will I slip the noisy world 
 
 And come, a duteous pilgrim, to your grave, 
 
 And wander all the paths you loved so well, 
 
 That memory of your greatness, oft renewed. 
 
 May spur the bating heart and quicken it 
 
 To hope, to toil, to suffer and endure." 
 
 He ceased. The stars shone brighter. The dews 
 
 fell. 
 The world through all her sloping vales was still ; 
 Only were heard two katydids that sang 
 In answer on the summit of an oak. 
 
DAWN 
 
 A NOVEL. PRICE, $3.00. 
 
 _ '* The world will perhaps pronounce the philosophy of this book sen- 
 timental, and in its treatment of social evils that are made sacred by 
 conventional neglect see a threat of harm ; but its views are sound, 
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 is a woman with a mission, — a true, gentle, loving creature, led by 
 the higher and purer influences through severe experiences, but sow- 
 ing seed of good, and strewing flowers along the way she goes with au 
 abandon of unselfishness. She presents in herself a model of spiritual 
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 present time." — City Item, Phila. 
 
 " A novel novel, somewhat out of the usual character of such works." 
 — Journal, Syracuse, N.T. 
 
 flailed postpaid. ADAMS «fc CO., Publishers, 
 
 25 Bromficld St., Boston. 
 
JOAN OF ARC. 
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 Translated from tlie Frencli by Miss 3. M. Grimke. 
 
 Embellished with a Photograph Portrait, copied from the celebrated 
 Painting in the Gallery of the Louvre, Paris ; and a map of Northern 
 France, showing the places rendered memorable by events connected 
 with her life. Price, $1.00. 
 
 " No one tires of reading of Joan of Akc. Her life is wonderful, her 
 deeds unaccountable, her mission a mystery. This volume simply nar- 
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 most pleasing book we have perused for many a day. There is nothing 
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 " A veritable history of the ' Maid of Orleans ; ' a spirited narrative 
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 Advocate, New York. 
 
 " This new biography is adorned with a wondrous ly beautiful portrait 
 of Joan, which is worth of itself all the book costs." — T'imes, Troy, 
 
 jsr.Y. 
 
 " The marvellous story of Joan of Arc was never told in English 
 in a more pleasing style than in this biography." — Liberal Christian, 
 New York. 
 
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 best popular account we have of Joan of Arc in the English language." 
 — Standard, New Bedford, Mass. 
 
 " Joan's career was so romantic that its events would be deemed in- 
 credible were they not established by incontrovertible historical evi- 
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 Cincinnati. 
 
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 bly a very exceptional and wonderful character, having scarcely a par- 
 allel in the annals of history." — Home Journal, New York. 
 
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BRANCHES OF PALM. 
 
 BY MRS. J. S. ADAMS. 
 
 Price,— Cloth, plain, $1.25. Cloth, full gilt, $1.75. 
 
 " Under various religious and poetical headings, the writer has given 
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 page. A true woman's heart, that has apparently passed through much 
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 John Weiss, in the " Badical,^' Boston. 
 
 " Alike in prose utterances and in verse, Mrs. Adams has given forth 
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 of mortal in every mood, under every trial. None can have descended 
 so deeply into the abyss of wretchedness that these sayings cannot 
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 Banner of Light, Boston. 
 
 " A book full of sweet influences as an jeolian harp of sweet music. 
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 written on different themes, they have the same key-note, and sound 
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SEVEN YEARS OF A SAILOR'S LIFE. 
 
 A Narrative of Voyages in Merchantmen and Ships of War, Coast- 
 ing, Trading, and Fishing Vessels ; Shipwrecks and Disasters in 
 the Indian Ocean and the Gulf Stream ; Captivity and Sufferings 
 among the Soumaulies of Eastern Africa; Wanderings and Adven- 
 tures in the Nubian Desert, Arabia, Hindostan, and the Indies ; to- 
 gether with an Inside View of Service on Union Gunboats and 
 Blocicaders, and Graphic Descriptions of the Duties and Perils 
 OF THE Fisheries on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. 
 
 BY 0£:OR6£: S:D\irARD CliARK. 
 
 With Nine Full -Page Illustrations Price, $2.00. 
 
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 and truthful a picture of ' life on the ocean wave .' " — Times, Troy, N. Y. 
 
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 interesting to Americans; for it tells of incidents of a recent date that 
 we are all interested in." — Journal, Spring field, III. 
 
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 than most men succeed in getting into seventy." — Boston Transcript. 
 
 "In startling interest and attractiveness this book is to be classed 
 with the travels of Livingstone andDu Chaillu." — JbwrwaZ, Lawrence, 
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 dangers of wreck and of battle."— Presbyterian, CJiicago, III. 
 
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 iar to the general reader." — Prairie Farmer, Chicago, III, 
 
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