IV.

DAY-DAWN.

THE first low fluttering breath of wakening Day
Stirs the wide air. Thin clouds of pearly haze
Float slowly o'er the sky, to meet the rays

Of the unrisen sun,

whose faint beams play

Among the drooping stars, kissing away

Their waning eyes to slumber. From the gaze,
Like snow-wreath at approach of vernal days,
The moon's pale circlet melts into the gray.
Glad Ocean quivers to the gentle gleams
Of rosy light that touch his glorious brow,
And murmurs joy with all his thousand streams;
And Earth's fair face is mantling with a glow,
Like youthful Beauty's, in its changeful hue,

When slumbers, rich with dreams, are bidding her adieu.

JOHN STUART BLACKIE.

I.

TO JAMES DODDS AND JOHN HUNTER.

(Arcades Ambo.)

SWEET pair of doves! The mystic notes that stirred Dodona's groves with oracles from Jove

Gave not a sweeter voice. Were I a bird,

I'd sing with you of joy and peace and love,

And nests on earth more blest than halls in heaven;

But me a sterner power inspires: like car

With fiery breath and brazen snortings driven.

O'er groaning rails and white smoke wreathing far,
My joy is action, and my music blasts

Of high-spurred energy that scorns delay :

Rock in your pleasure-boats! 'Tis well.

With masts

Sore-straining 'neath the gale I dash the spray :

Your souls in CRAIGCROOK'S warbling heaven shall

dwell;

Mine drives from earth the harnessed Devil to hell!

II.

HIGHLAND SOLITUDE.

In the lone glen the silver lake doth sleep; Sleeps the white cloud upon the sheer black hill: All moorland sounds a solemn silence keep;

I only hear the tiny trickling rill

'Neath the red moss.

Athwart the dim gray pall

That veils the day a dusky fowl may fly;

But, on this bleak brown moor, if thou shalt call

For men, a spirit will sooner make reply.

Come hither, thou whose agile mind doth flit
From talk to talk, and tempt the pensive mood.
Converse with men makes sharp the glittering wit,
But God to man doth speak in solitude.
Come, sit thee down upon this old gray stone;

Men learn to think, and feel, and pray, alone.

III.

AT LOCH ERICHT.

No railways!
From travelling cockneys, wondering at a hill,
From lisping ladies, who from huge towns flee,
To nurse feigned raptures at a tumbling rill!
From large hotels and finely-furnished inns,
With all things but pure kindness in their plan,
And from sleek waiters, whose obsequious grins
Do make me loathe the very face of man!
Smooth modern age, which no rough line doth mar,
All men must praise thy very decent law!
But in this bothie I am happier far,

thank Heaven at length I'm free

Where I must feed on oats, and sleep on straw.

For why? Here men look forth from honest faces, And are what thing they seem, without grimaces.

IV.

BEN MUICHDHUI.

O'ER broad Muichdhui sweeps the keen cold blast;
Far whirrs the snow-bred, white-winged ptarmigan;
Sheer sink the cliffs to dark Loch Etagan,
And all the hill with shattered rock lies waste.

Here brew ship-foundering storms their force divine;
Here gush the fountains of wild-flooding rivers;
Here the strong thunder frames the bolt that shivers
The giant strength of the old twisted pine.
Yet, even here, on the bare waterless brow
Of granite ruin, I found a purple flower,
A delicate flower, as fair as aught, I trow,
That toys with zephyrs in my lady's bower.
So Nature blends her powers; and he is wise
Who to his strength no gentlest grace denies.