University of Virginia Library

And what is it all for—this heaping of ashes
On the hot fire of youth till you smother its flashes?—
This stating again of our hopeless imbroglios,
And dulling the brain with the dust of old folios?
There's my old school-companion, Dick Gow of the Glen,
With the brains of a half man, and labours of ten;
How he toils on, and mopes over volumes patristic,
And dogmas forensic, and rites eucharistic,
And fictions of law, that he calls gospel verity,
And tries to believe he believes in sincerity.
Meanwhile in the glen where his childhood had been
Stands the lowly turf hut, where the house-leek is green;
Near by it, the burn rushes hurrying down
Through the rocky gorge headlong, and turbid, and brown,
Or glistens o'er slippery shelves, green with long moss,
Where the maiden-hair tresses stretch half-way across,
Or sleeps in the pools where the speckled trout play,
And leap to the fly when the evening is grey,
Or sings through the woodland its few plaintive bars
To the slender oak-fern, and the pale sorrel-stars.
There, cramped with rheumatics, and bending with age,
His grave father sweats at the ditch and the hedge,
And sisters and brothers are patiently drudging
From day-break till dark, unrepining, ungrudging;
And all, as they stint food and raiment and fire,
Have but one hope that cheers them—to see the Kirk spire
In the glory long prayed for, when crossing the hill.
Lo! the folk are fast gathering from farmstead and mill,
From the shepherd's lone hut in the deep mountain shade,
And the wood-ranger's hid in the dim forest glade,
All to hear their boy preach the great Gospel, and sever
Himself from the old home and old life for ever.—
That's the end of his struggle, when Priesthood has riven
The fondest of earth's ties, that bind us to heaven;
Has sundered those hearts that were loving and true,
And linked him now fast to the Laird, and the few
Respectable folk who have nothing to do!