University of Virginia Library

DONALD TOSHACH

HIGHLAND LAND IMPROVER

Big and burly and jolly and strong,
Nineteen stone if he weighs a pound,
Yet as he strides, with his gun, among
The corries and hills where the game is found,
How light is his step o'er the heathery ground!

For his wind is sound, and his heart is gay;
There's a dash of Norse blood in that light-haired Celt,
And his enterprise, and his dashing way
He got from the Vikings of old, that dwelt
In the ships or the brochs where the sea is smelt.

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364

Great is his laughter, and needs but the half
Of a joke to set it in roaring trim;
And as you list to that great, glad laugh,
You would give something to laugh like him,
For it seems to go rolling through every limb.

Shrewd at an argument, always keen,
Celt-like, to reason of things divine,
Yet not, like the Celt, upon faith to lean,
And pelt you with Scriptures line upon line;
For texts to him are like sips of wine:

So he goes groping half in the dark,—
Half in the dark, but he swears it is day—
Like one in adeep mine working stark,
By a flickering lamp that shoots its ray,
And shows the dark, if it shows not the way.

But his strength is in action, in setting the folk
Road-making, bridge-building, planting trees,
Draining the marshes, and blasting the rock,
Or reaping the harvest of the seas,
Making the idlest busy as bees.

Watch him sitting on some grey stone,
And overlooking the moorland brown;
What are his thoughts as he broods alone?—
Of forests where now only heather is grown,
And the homesteads and mills, when it shall be his own.

“Yonder the mansion shall stand on its lawn,
The hills shall be covered with larch and pine,
Here shall the flowering shrubs glow in the dawn,
And the wasted torrents shall all combine
To be a power and a slave of mine.

“God made no part of His earth to lie
Waste as this is, with idle men
Watching the wild birds as they fly,
Orred deer cropping the brackened glen,
Or the salmon seeking the streams again.

“The corn may mildew, alas, on the field,
And the hay lie wasted there where it grew;
Yet something there is which the land should yield,
Something there must be for man to do
Other than sport the whole year through.”

Then will he buy a big lump of the shire,
And men from the isles will come at his call,
To trench it, and fence it with stone and wire,
Five hundred Islesmen strong and tall,
Able workers at ditch and wall.

And slicing it up into small estates,
Planning houses and carriage-ways,
And winding paths with their wicket gates,
And planting thick on the hills and braes,
He toils through the sunny summer days.

Neighbours laugh at him, call him mad,
Prophesy death to his million trees,
Mock at his schemes, and are almost glad
Of any mishap that they can seize
To show they were right in their auguries.

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365

Till some day, lo! the five hundred men
Shoulder their picks, and march away
Back to their Western Isles again;
But twenty freeholders come, and they
Pitch their tents, for they mean to stay.

They love not idle folk there to see,
But they pay for work with their crowns and groats;
And they would have people strong and free
With kindlier crofts, and warmer cots,
And they are many—and they have votes.

But steeped in pride from the toe to the crown,
Steeped in debt too up to the lip,
The neighbours askance at them look and frown,
And try to hold on with a firmer grip,
Lest from their hands the County slip.

But not for that does he toil and scheme;
What cares he for their party wars,
Could he but rouse them from their dream
To care for the people, and heal their scars,
And grow what Nature not debars?

But what they want is a solitude,
A land that hath no neighbour folk,
Nor any work for the common good,
But only a desert of bog and rock,
Where the antlered stag and his hinds may flock.

“For deer and gilliedom are our curse,”
So he vows in his stormy way,
“Making the lazy clansman worse,
As he lives on the thriftless Saxon's pay
With two months work, and ten months play.”

Then will he turn and say, “'Tis time
I made a nest for myself at last;
I have been changing soil and clime
Only for others, but that is past;
Where shall my own lot now be cast?”

Yonder a waste and lonely land
Of bog and rock by a spreading lake:
There shall a goodly mansion stand,
And glade and garden he will make,
And all the hills into leafage break.

Yet when he looks on his finished home,
Garth and forest and mansion too,
How shall he spend the days to come,
Now there is nothing for him to do?
Ah, he must find out something new.

Fair is the house beside the lake,
And it rings with the voices of child and guest;
But there his pleasure he cannot take,
It is no pleasure for him to rest;—
Making a new world still is best.

Sell it off for a rocky isle;
There will he fashion a busy life;
Bleak as the land is, it shall smile
For ragged children and drudging wife,
For there the wealth of the sea is rife.

Oats will not ripen, and barley fails,
But the grass in the glens is green and sweet,
And the Lochs shall gleam with the fishers' sails,
And the coves shall smile with houses neat,
While the flocks in the glen shall browse and bleat.

O Rocky Isle in the western sea,
Rouse thee on every cape and bay;
Now listless slumber is not for thee,
But curing and coopering all the day,
And launching of boats on the ocean spray.

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366

Oh for a hundred such as he!
They tell me he will be ruined soon:
Pity! and yet his work will be
Stirring and brisk as a merry tune,
E'en should he wane like a waning moon.

Industry has its martyrs too,
And one might die in a worser cause;
Yet do I hope he will live to view
A people living by wholesome laws,
And thriving homes where the seagull was.