THE COMPLETE POETICAL WORKS OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. Walter Scott

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       Within the dark ravines below,

       Where twined the path in shadow hid,

       Round many a rocky pyramid,

       Shooting abruptly from the dell

       Its thunder-splintered pinnacle;

       Round many an insulated mass,

       The native bulwarks of the pass,

       Huge as the tower which builders vain

       Presumptuous piled on Shinar’s plain.

       The rocky summits, split and rent,

       Formed turret, dome, or battlement.

       Or seemed fantastically set

       With cupola or minaret,

       Wild crests as pagod ever decked,

       Or mosque of Eastern architect.

       Nor were these earth-born castles bare,

       Nor lacked they many a banner fair;

       For, from their shivered brows displayed,

       Far o’er the unfathomable glade,

       All twinkling with the dewdrop sheen,

       The briar-rose fell in streamers green,

       kind creeping shrubs of thousand dyes

       Waved in the west-wind’s summer sighs.

       XII

      Boon nature scattered, free and wild,

       Each plant or flower, the mountain’s child.

       Here eglantine embalmed the air,

       Hawthorn and hazel mingled there;

       The primrose pale and violet flower

       Found in each cliff a narrow bower;

       Foxglove and nightshade, side by side,

       Emblems of punishment and pride,

       Grouped their dark hues with every stain

       The weatherbeaten crags retain.

       With boughs that quaked at every breath,

       Gray birch and aspen wept beneath;

       Aloft, the ash and warrior oak

       Cast anchor in the rifted rock;

       And, higher yet, the pine-tree hung

       His shattered trunk, and frequent flung,

       Where seemed the cliffs to meet on high,

       His boughs athwart the narrowed sky.

       Highest of all, where white peaks glanced,

       Where glistening streamers waved and danced,

       The wanderer’s eye could barely view

       The summer heaven’s delicious blue;

       So wondrous wild, the whole might seem

       The scenery of a fairy dream.

       XIII

      Onward, amid the copse ‘gan peep

       A narrow inlet, still and deep,

       Affording scarce such breadth of brim

       As served the wild duck’s brood to swim.

       Lost for a space, through thickets veering,

       But broader when again appearing,

       Tall rocks and tufted knolls their face

       Could on the dark-blue mirror trace;

       And farther as the Hunter strayed,

       Still broader sweep its channels made.

       The shaggy mounds no longer stood,

       Emerging from entangled wood,

       But, wave-encircled, seemed to float,

       Like castle girdled with its moat;

       Yet broader floods extending still

       Divide them from their parent hill,

       Till each, retiring, claims to be

       An islet in an inland sea.

       XIV

      And now, to issue from the glen,

       No pathway meets the wanderer’s ken,

       Unless he climb with footing nice

       A far-projecting precipice.

       The broom’s tough roots his ladder made,

       The hazel saplings lent their aid;

       And thus an airy point he won,

       Where, gleaming with the setting sun,

       One burnished sheet of living gold,

       Loch Katrine lay beneath him rolled,

       In all her length far winding lay,

       With promontory, creek, and bay,

       And islands that, empurpled bright,

       Floated amid the livelier light,

       And mountains that like giants stand

       To sentinel enchanted land.

       High on the south, huge Benvenue

       Down to the lake in masses threw

       Crags, knolls, and mounds, confusedly hurled,

       The fragments of an earlier world;

       A wildering forest feathered o’er

       His ruined sides and summit hoar,

       While on the north, through middle air,

       Ben-an heaved high his forehead bare.

       XV

      From the steep promontory gazed

       The stranger, raptured and amazed,

       And, ‘What a scene were here,’ he cried,

       ‘For princely СКАЧАТЬ