Him that yon soars on golden wing, Gently o'er th' accustomed oak; Sweet bird, that shunn'st the noise of folly, Most musical, most melancholy! Thee, chauntress, oft the woods among I woo, to hear thy even-song; way; And oft, as if her head she bow'd, room Teach light to counterfeit a gloom; harm: Or let my lamp at midnight hour The spirit of Plato, to unfold The immortal mind, that hath forsook Her mansion in this fleshly nook: And of those Demons that are found In fire, air, flood, or under ground, Or the tale of Troy divine, Or call up him that left half told And of the wondrous horse of brass, Entice the dewy-feather'd Sleep; And let some strange mysterious dream Wave at his wings in aery stream Dissolve me into ecstasies, And bring all heav'n before mine eyes. And may at last my weary age FROM THE BOTHIE OF TOBER NA VUOLICH. THERE is a stream, I name not its name, lest inquisitive tourist Hunt it, and make it a lion, and get it at last into guide-books, Springing far off from a loch unexplored in the folds of great mountains, Falling two miles through rowan and stunted alder, enveloped Then for four more in a forest of pine, where broad and ample Spreads, to convey it, the glen with heathery slopes on both sides: Broad and fair the stream, with occasional falls and narrows; But, where the glen of its course approaches the vale of the river, Met and blocked by a huge interposing mass of granite, Scarce by a channel deep-cut, raging up and raging onward, Forces its flood through a passage so narrow a lady would step it, There, across the great rocky wharves, a wooden bridge goes, Carrying a path to the forest; below, three hundred yards, say Lower in level some twenty-five feet, through flats of shingle, Stepping-stones and a cart-track cross in the open valley. But in the interval here the boiling, pent-up water Frees itself by a final descent, attaining a basin, Ten feet wide and eighteen long, with whiteness and fury Occupied partly, but mostly pellucid, pure, a mirror; Beautiful there for color derived from green rocks under; Beautiful, most of all, where beads of foam uprising Mingle their clouds of white with the delicate hue of the stillness. Cliff over cliff for its sides, with rowan and pendent birch-boughs, Here it lies, unthought of above at the bridge and pathway, Still more enclosed from below by wood and rocky projection. You are shut in, left alone with yourself and perfection of Piercing a wood, and skirting a narrow and natural causeway Under the rocky wall that hedges the bed of the streamlet, Rounded a craggy point, and saw on a sudden before them Slabs of rock, and a tiny beach, and perfection of water, Picture-like beauty, seclusion sub lime, and the goddess of bathing. There they bathed, of course, and Arthur, the glory of headers, Leapt from the ledges with Hope, he twenty feet, he thirty; There, overbold, great Hobbes from a ten-foot height descended, Prone, as a quadruped, prone with hands and feet protending; There in the sparkling champagne, ecstatic, they shrieked and shouted. Adam adjudged it the name of Hesperus, star of the evening. Hither, to Hesperus, now, the star of evening above them, Come in their lonelier walk the pupils twain and Tutor; Turned from the track of the carts, and passing the stone and shingle, Piercing the wood, and skirting the stream by the natural causeway, Rounded the craggy point, and now at their ease looked up; and Lo, on the rocky ledge, regardant, the Glory of headers, Lo, on the beach, expecting the plunge, not cigarless, the Piper. And they looked, and wondered, incredulous, looking yet once more. Yes, it was he, on the ledge, barelimbed, an Apollo, down-gazing, |