Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland Part 25

CARLYLE

(AT ECCLEFECHAN).

The ploughman in the loamy furrow sings, The sailor whistles as he reefs the sail, Blithe is the smith as the blows fall like hail From his huge hammer, and the st.i.thy rings.

Work is the sole and sovereign balm that brings Peace to the torpid soul when doubts a.s.sail, And sickening pleasures are of no avail To lull the torture of affliction's stings.

Give me the work I love, the work I feel G.o.d in His Heaven has willed that I should do, And you may offer the whole commonweal, Lands, mansions, jewels, gold, and temples too, Vainly to me. By strenuous work alone Man mounts on Jacob's ladder to G.o.d's throne.

XIII.

Sh.e.l.lEY.[36]

'Twas but a pa.s.sing visit that he paid To the gross air of earth, this mystic seer, The tyrannies of sense were too severe For one of clay more fine than Adam's made.

The inhumanity of man, the trade Of coining gold from the serf's groan and tear, The galling fetters of religious fear, And vain ecclesiastic masquerade Tortured his gentle soul, and made his life One bitter struggle with the powers that be: Yet not in vain he lived; his manful strife With all the deadening despotisms we see Will ring along the centuries, until Good has her final triumph over ill.

[36] Suggested by a copy of his poems in a West Highland bookcase.

XIV.

PICTURE IN AN INN.

A wood of pines through which the setting sun Pours from the western sky a parting flame, Beside the sh.o.r.e, a church called by the name Of some old saint whose pious race was run Long ere schismatic Luther had begun To work the Pope and his disciples shame.

In earnest-seeming talk, a knight and dame Sit in a painted galley, rowed by one Whose back is to the setting orb of day.

The soldier and his mate, their faces lit With all love's animation and the ray Of the down-lapsing globe of crimson, sit Together in the gilded vessel's prow, And there will sit for evermore, as now.

XV.

RAIN-STORM AT LOCH AWE.

The topmost mountain-snows are melting fast, See, how the swollen waters hurry down In perpendicular runnels from the crown Of every wreathed hill. The train has past Beside a dark stream into which are cast A hundred huddling rills whose foam is brown With pilfered soil. No dweller in a town Ever beheld such manifold and vast Torrents of roaring water. Each small isle s.p.a.ced on the loch, glooms through the hanging haze Like a dream-picture, and for many a mile Beneath those clouds that lean upon the braes Encompa.s.sing Loch Awe, the watery plain Is p.r.i.c.ked with million lances of the rain.

XVI.

KINLOCHEWE.

The mist, retreating, gems the leaves with dew, Soft blows the breeze along the fragrant meads, A little brawling burn runs through the reeds And ripples away under the cloudless blue.

I never saw the world so fair to view, For Spring has riven old Winter's funeral weeds And given new sap and vigour to the seeds That lay inanimate the cold months through.

Old man! with jaded limbs and wrinkled brow, That walkest feebly in this lenient sun Like a day-dream, thy life is winter now.

But life and death in ceaseless cycles run, And tireless Time and Heaven have in store For thee a myriad resurrections more.

XVII.

GENERAL WADE.

Houses are fewer here than milestones are: We stand a thousand feet aloft in air Upon a bouldered hillside stern and bare, Down which the roadway serpentines afar.

There are no clouds in the wide blue to mar The pa.s.sage of the sun's imperial glare Over a dreary-stretching landscape, where Rough winds hold riot all the calendar.

Who that has footed o'er these firm-knit paths But lauds the men whose strenuous axe and spade Drove roads through the wild glens and hilly straths Under the generals.h.i.+p of tireless Wade!

On the safe tracks behind them, commerce came The unruly spirit of the Celt to tame.

XVIII.

THE SOUND OF RAASAY IN DECEMBER.

A snowy gust is whirling down the strait, Raasay is gleaming ghostly to the sight, And, robed in lawn, from sea to topmost height Skye and her lordly mountains stand in state.

Ever from heaven falls the silent weight Of wavering flakes that dim the stars of night.

Our gallant little boat with all the might Of the wild-hissing surges holds debate, Plunging and struggling, till at last we see A s.p.a.cious haven, sudden and serene And, high aloft, the twinkle of Portree.

At once the winds are hushed, the moon is seen To free her face from cloudy drift, and fill With silver light the clefts of Essie Hill.

XIX.

LES NEIGES D'ANTAN.

I.

Where is Macfee, that valiant preacher, Gifted with voice, so harsh and loud, Aye, louder and harsher than any screecher Of birds that sail on the black storm-cloud?

And his beadle John, with back so bowed, Where is _he_ that had never a peer?

Is he too rolled in his mortal shroud?

But where are the snows of yester-year?

II.

Donald the Gay, that steered his steamer Many a year through the Sound of Mull, He that was never a Celtic dreamer, But a captain of captains masterful: O Death, thou madest the world more dull When you nailed _him_ down in his narrow bier, And sent his ghost into Charon's hull; But where are the snows of yester-year?

III.

Duncan, the bard of rocky Staffin, Away in the north of rainy Skye: Has _he_ given over his rimes and daffin', In the mould of the bleak kirkyard to lie?

His cot was built where the sea-gulls fly, And his misty isle to his soul was dear; Ere his song is finished, the bard must die; But where are the snows of yester-year?

IV.

And Dougal, who carried King Edward's mails Every day o'er the moor and heather, Scorning the chill of the winter gales, And the ten-mile walk in the sultry weather: Has _he_ too come to the end of his tether And gone to the ghosts with all his gear, His whistle, his satchel and strap of leather?

But where are the snows of yester-year?

V.

Prince, they have gone from the regions that knew them, Gone at the summons that none can resist, Praise and every honour be to them, They did their best and they will be missed.

We, too, shall soon be erased from the list Of workers below in this mortal sphere, And be no more to those that exist Than the vanished snows of yester-year.

XX.

THE ISLANDS OF THE NESS.