The whirling snow-flakes, through the open holes Descending, gather on the tombs beneath,
And make the sad scene desolater still:
When sweeps the night-gale past on forceful wing, And sighs through portals grey a solemn dirge, As if in melancholy symphony,
The huge planes wail aloud, the alders creak, The ivy rustles, and the hemlock bends With locks of darkness to its very roots, Springing from out the grassy mounds of those Whose tombs are long since tenantless.
But now, With calm and quiet eye, the setting sun, Back from the Grampians that engird the Forth, Beams mellowness upon the wrecks around,
Tinges the broken arch with crimson rust, Flames down the Gothic aisle, and mantles o'er The tablatures of marble. Beautiful-
So bathed in nature's glorious smiles intense- The ruined altar, the baptismal font, The wallflower-crested pillars, foliage-bound, The shafted oriel, and the ribbed roofs, Labour, in years long past, of cunning hands!
Thy lords have passed away: their palace home, Where princes oft at wine and wassail sate,37 Hath not a stone now on another left; And scarcely can the curious eye trace out Its strong foundations—though its giant arms, Once, in their wide protecting amplitude,
Even like a parent's circled thee about. Now Twilight mantles nature: silence reigns, Save that, beneath, amid the danky vaults, Is heard, with fitful melancholy sound, The clammy dew-drop plashing: silence reigns, Save that amid the gnarly sycamores,
That spread their huge embowering shades around, From clear, melodious throat, the blackbird trills His song-his almost homily to man— Dirge-like, and sinking in the moody heart,
With tones prophetic. Through the trellis green, The purpling hills look dusky; and the clouds, Shorn of their edge-work of refulgent gold, Spread, whitening, o'er the bosom of the sky. Monastic pile, farewell! to Solitude
I leave thy ruins; though, not more with thee, Often than on the highways of the world,
Where throng the busy multitudes astir,
My thoughts have brooded on the changeful scene,
Gazed at it through the microscope of Truth,
And found it, as the Royal Psalmist found, In all its issues, and in all its hopes, Mere vanity. With ken reverting far Through the bright Eden of departed years, Here Contemplation, from the stir of life Estranged, might treasure many a lesson deep; And view, with unsophisticated eye,
The lowly state, and lofty destiny,
The pride and insignificance of man!
THE PARK OF KELBURN CASTLE.
A LOVELY eve! though yet it is but spring Led on by April,-a refulgent eve,
With its soft west wind, and its mild white clouds, Silently floating through the depths of blue. The bird, from out the thicket, sends a gush Of song, that heralds summer, and calls forth The squirrel from its fungus-covered cave In the old oak. Where do the conies sport? Lo! from the shelter of yon flowering furze, O'ermantling, like an aureate crown, the brow Of the grey rock, with sudden bound, and stop And start, the mother with her little ones, Cropping the herbage in its tenderest green; While overhead the elm, and oak, and ash,
Weave for the hundredth time their annual boughs, Bright with their varied leaflets.
From yon secluded haunt, where hill from hill Diverging leaves, in sequestration calm,
A holm of pastoral loveliness: the lamb, Screened from the biting east, securely roams There, in wild gambol with its peers, on turf Like emerald velvet, soft and smooth; and starts Aside from the near waterfall, whose sheet Winds foaming down the rocks precipitous, Now seen, and now half-hidden by the trunks Contorted, and the wide umbrageous boughs Of time and tempest-nurtured woods. Away From the sea-murmur ceaseless, up between The green secluding hills, that hem it round As 'twere with conscious love, stands Kelburn House, With its grey turrets, in baronial state, A proud memento of the days when men Thought but of war and safety. Stately pile And lovely woods! not often have mine eyes Gazed o'er a scene more picturesque, or more Heart-touching in its beauty. Thou wert once The guardian of these valleys, and the foe Approaching heard, between himself and thee, The fierce, down-thundering, mocking waterfall; While, on thy battlements, in glittering mail, The warder glided; and the sentinel,-
As neared the stranger horseman to thy gates, And gave the pass-word, which no answer found,- Plucked from his quiver the unerring shaft,
Which, from Kilwinning's spire, had oft brought down The mock Papingo.39
Yet in thy quietude not desolate,
Now, like a relic of the times gone by,
Down from thy verdant throne, upon the sea, Which glitters like a sheet of molten gold, Thou lookest thus, at eventide, while sets, In opal and in amethystine hues,
The day o'er distant Arran, with its peaks Sky-piercing, yet o'erclad with winter's snows In desolate grandeur; and the cottaged fields Of nearer Bute smile in their vernal green, A picture of repose. High overhead
The gull, far-shrieking, through yon stern ravine
Of wild, rude rocks, where brawls the mountain stream, Wings to the sea, and seeks, beyond its foams, Its own precipitous cliff upon the coast
Of fair and fertile Cumbrae; while the rook, Conscious of coming eventide, forsakes
The leafing woods, and round the chimneyed roofs Caws as he wheels, alights, and then anon
Renews his circling flight in clamorous joy.
Mountains that face bald Arran! though the sun
Now, with the ruddy lights of eventide, Gilds every pastoral summit on which Peace, Like a descended angel, sits enthroned, Forth gazing on a scene as beautiful As Nature e'er outspread for mortal eye; And but the voice of distant waterfall Sings lullaby to bird and beast, and wings Of insects murmurous, multitudinous,
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