The Isles of Loch Awe and Other Poems of my Youth ::

They who love Nature best surround themselves
With objects that recall her to the mind;
And in great cities you will often meet
Some treasured relic, an imprisoned thrush,
Or, with their roots in water, hyacinths
Flowering in narrow windows to the sun.
But in an artist's painting-room, to aid
His memories of fair landscapes far away,
When by oppressive gaslight in the fogs
Of winter he must labour for his bread,
You see such relics most. A creeping plant
Hangs on the gaspipe—once above a stream
It drank the ceaseless dew of scattering spray.
Between the quaint old ceiling and the floor
A falcon hangs suspended by a thread,
A scarecrow blind and shrunken—not the same
As when he used to hover in the wind,

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With wings outspread and quivering, and keen eye
That watched the fields below, where not a mouse
Could leave its hole and live. A heron, too,
As sadly changed, is on the mantelpiece,
Dusty and foul—poor thing, it bathes no more
Its grey, fine plumage, in the lonely pools
It used to haunt! Beneath its terrible beak
A dim and broken snakeskin, badly stuffed,
Lies stiffly coiled—how altered since it clothed
A lithe and supple creature with a garb
Of gleaming silver!

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