As generations come and go Their arts, their customs, ebb and flow; While young delights on old encroach, But when, from out their viewless bed, And clears Oblivion from reproach, May render back the Highland Broach*. How much the Broach is sometimes prized by persons in humble stations may be gathered from an occurrence mentioned to me by a female friend. She had had an opportunity of benefiting a poor old woman in her XVI. THE BROWNIE. Upon a small island not far from the head of Loch Lomond, are some remains of an ancient building, which was for several years the abode of a solitary Individual, one of the last survivors of the clan of Macfarlane, once powerful in that neighbourhood. Passing along the shore opposite this island in the year 1814, the Author learned these particulars, and that this person then living there had acquired the appellation of 'The Brownie.' See "The Brownie's Cell," p. 44, Vol. iii.: to which the following is a sequel. 'How disappeared he ?' Ask the newt and toad; Under an arch of that forlorn abode; Where he, unpropped, and by the gathering flood With no one near save the omnipresent God. Drove from itself, we trust, all frightful gloom. own hut, who, wishing to make a return, said to her daughter, in Erse, in a tone of plaintive earnestness, "I would give anything I have, but I hope she does not wish for my Broach!" and, uttering these words, she put her hand upon the Broach which fastened her kerchief, and which, she imagined, had attracted the eye of her benefactress. XVII. TO THE PLANET VENUS, AN EVENING STAR. COMPOSED AT LOCH LOMOND. THOUGH joy attend Thee orient at the birth To watch thy course when Day-light, fled from earth, The mountain borders of this seat of care, XVIII. BOTHWELL CASTLE. (PASSED UNSEEN, ON ACCOUNT OF STORMY WEATHER.) [IN my Sister's Journal is an account of Bothwell Castle as it appeared to us at that time.] IMMURED in Bothwell's towers, at times the Brave (So beautiful is Clyde) forgot to mourn VOL. IV. I The liberty they lost at Bannockburn. Once on those steeps I roamed at large, and have Than blame the present, that our wish hath crost. XIX. PICTURE OF DANIEL IN THE LIONS' DEN, AT HAMILTON PALACE. AMID a fertile region green with wood And fresh with rivers, well did it become To naturalise this tawny Lion brood; Children of Art, that claim strange brotherhood (Couched in their den) with those that roam at large Over the burning wilderness, and charge The wind with terror while they roar for food. XX. THE AVON. A FEEDER OF THE ANNAN. ["YET is it one that other rivulets bear." There is the Shakspeare Avon, the Bristol Avon; the one that flows by Salisbury, and a small river in Wales, I believe, bear the name; Avon being in the ancient tongue the general name for river.] AVON -a precious, an immortal name! Like this unheard-of, and their channels wear Shrink from thy name, pure Rill, with unpleased ears. |