Records and Other Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

As in the babbling crowd where gossips meet,
Some quiet heart maintains itself alone—
Or grass-grown alley off the trampled street—
Glen-Messen lies unknown.

The visitors of summer come and go,
With many a far-famed scene within their ken;
But even their books of travel do not know,
This almost nameless glen.

I got its being and its name from one
Who loves to brood on beauty near at home,
And, haply, garners more, when all is done,
Than those who farther roam.

It was a golden summer day, and Clyde,
From shore to shore, was all one molten flame;
The Holy Loch, still'd with the swollen tide,
Was hallowed as its name.

As up its southern marge I slowly stray'd,
I heard the measured dip of unseen oar,
And even the prattling children as they play'd
Upon the further shore.

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Up by the placid loch, which, far beneath,
Bosom'd the summer beauty of the skies,—
I reach'd its upper shores, then took the heath,
For there Glen-messen lies.

Now, where the burn comes swirling from the glen,
A little homestead nestles by a brake,—
And there the yellowhammer and the wren
A desert music make.

An open door invited me within.
The cat purr'd, half asleep, upon the hearth;
A crackling fire kept up a homely din,
The pot a quiet mirth.

The captured fly buzz'd in the spider's weft,
The clock tick'd solemnly against the wall;
The housewife had gone forth, and puss was left
Sole mistress over all.

To this quaint concert I a while gave ear,
Look'd at the vacant stools and chairs; and then,
Exchanging with the cat a brief “good cheer,”
Pass'd slowly up the glen.

The hills shut out the world with all its noise,
Shut in the murmur of the hidden stream;
And only once a hawk, with sudden poise,
Utter'd a sudden scream.

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The little glen was all in dreamy hush:
But soon a muffled rumble, soft and deep,
And then the cataract's imperious rush
Awoke it from its sleep.

Adown the glen the burn shot in and out
Beneath the shelving rocks, and where it stay'd
In quiet crystal pools, the speckled trout
In dimpling eddies play'd.

Here, through a rocky sluice the waters bored—
There, round and round in boiling caldron wheel'd;
And up the cataract, like a flashing sword,
The silvery salmon speil'd.

Like a deep thinker, in himself entomb'd,
Stood on a stone the solitary hern;
While all around the purple heather bloom'd,
And waved the feathery fern.

The long, long summer day, in sun and shade,
I linger'd there—but years have gone since then—
And many a pilgrimage in thought I've made,
To wander in the glen.

All Nature finds in man a counterpart:
She takes her spell-bound lover by the hand,
And makes him one with that mysterious heart
That beats through sea and land.