University of Virginia Library

SONNETS.

I
KING'S HOUSE INN.

Fair are the trees whose random tresses fling
Rich grace on the green steeps of Ballachulish;
But King's House Inn, though you may deem it foolish,
And its bleak moor, my wilful Muse will sing.
For why? I love the torrent's savage din,
The giant-trailing mist, the snorting Ben,
The wind-swept heath, the long, deer-sheltering glen,
The still black tarn, and far-up-thundering linn.
And here erect with majesty severe
The Buchail More upshoots his Titan cone;
I stand and look and gaze on Him alone,
As if no other mighty Ben were near,
And hear the pewits cry, and the wind blow
Notes of shrill wail up from the steep Glencoe!

II
MOONLIGHT AT KING'S HOUSE.

O for the touch that smote the psalmist's lyre,
When the great beauty of the world he saw,
And sang His praise, instinct with holy awe,
Who rides the whirlwind, and who reins the fire!
But not alone proud Lebanon's fulgent face
Hath power the eye of trancèd seer to draw;
Here, too, in Grampian land God rules by law,
Which clothes the awfullest forms in loveliest grace.
The placid moon, the huge sky-cleaving Ben,
The moor loch glancing in the argent ray,
The long white mist low-trailing up the glen,
The hum of mighty waters far away,
All make me wish that worthy words would come;
But all I find is—worship, and be dumb!

III
TO AN OLD LEAFLESS TREE ON THE MOOR, NEAR KING'S HOUSE.

Poor wreck of the old forest, gaunt and grim,
No leafy fan, no soft green shade is thine,
But thou hast charms will stir a rhymer's whim
To deck thy ruin with a random line.
Where be thy brothers? I have seen them show
Their prostrate roots beneath long-centuried peat
Mile after mile, where nothing now will grow
Verdant, for eye to love or mouth to eat.
But thou alone dost stand, like some old creed,
Erect, to show what price it had before,
When men believed it had a power indeed,
To soothe each sorrow, and to cleanse each sore;
Or, like a statesman by the moving time
Deserted, in his dry old strength sublime.

IV
THE BUCHAILL ETIVE.

Thou lofty shepherd of dark Etive glen,
Tall Titan warder of the grim Glencoe,
I clomb thy starward peak not long ago,
And call thee mine, and love thee much since then.
Oft have I marvelled, if mine eye had been
Strange witness to Creation's natal hour,
How wondrous then had showed the flaming scene
When out of seething depths thy cone with power
Was shot from God. But now upon thy steep
Fair greenness sleeps on old secure foundations,
And on thee browze the innocent-bleating sheep
And timorous troops of the high-antlered nations;
And I am here, Time's latest product, Man,
To work thy will, O Lord, and serve thy stately plan.