While a dark storm before my sight Was yielding, on a mountain height have I watched, that won Loose vapors Prismatic colors from the sun; Nor felt a wish that heaven would show The image of its perfect bow. What need, then, of these finished Strains? Away with counterfeit Remains! An abbey in its lone recess, A temple of the wilderness, Wrecks though they be, announce with feeling The majesty of honest dealing. Spirit of Ossian! if imbound In language thou mayst yet be found, If aught (intrusted to the pen Or floating on the tongues of men, In concert with memorial claim Of old gray stone, and high-born name That cleaves to rock or pillared cave Where moans the blast or beats the wave, And for presumptuous wrongs atone; Time is not blind; yet he, who spares Pyramid pointing to the stars, Hath preyed with ruthless appetite On all that marked the primal flight Of the poetic ecstasy Into the land of mystery. No tongue is able to rehearse One measure, Orpheus! of thy verse; Have sunk, at Nature's call; or strayed Frantic, else how might they rejoice? And friendless, by their own sad choice! Hail, Bards of mightier grasp ! on you Who cast not off the acknowledged guide, Dropped from the lenient cloud of years. Brothers in soul! though distant times XXVIII. CAVE OF STAFFA. WE saw, but surely, in the motley crowd, 1824. How could we feel it? each the other's blight, And by one Votary, who at will might stand XXIX. CAVE OF STAFFA. (After the Crowd had departed.) THANKS for the lessons of this spot, - fit school For the presumptuous thoughts that would assign Mechanic laws to agency divine; And, measuring heaven by earth, would overrule Might seem designed to humble man, when proud In calms is conscious, finding for his freight XXX. CAVE OF STAFFA. YE shadowy Beings, that have rights and claims Where are ye? Driven or venturing to the spot, Vanished ye are, but subject to recall; Why keep we else the instincts whose dread law Ruled here of yore, till what men felt they saw, Not by black arts but magic natural ! If eyes be still sworn vassals of belief, Yon light shapes forth a Bard, that shade a Chief. XXXI. FLOWERS ON THE TOP OF THE PILLARS AT THE ENTRANCE OF THE CAVE. HOPE smiled when your nativity was cast, Children of Summer! Ye fresh Flowers that brave |