By civil arts and labours of the pen,

Could gentleness be scorned by those 1 fierce Men,
Who, to spread wide the reverence they claimed 2
For patriarchal occupations, named

Yon towering Peaks, "

Shepherds of Etive Glen ?”*

ΙΟ

XII

SUGGESTED AT TYNDRUM IN A STORM 3

ENOUGH of garlands, of the Arcadian crook,
And all that Greece and Italy have sung
Of Swains reposing myrtle groves among!
Ours couch on naked rocks,—will cross a brook
Swoln with chill rains, nor ever cast a look
This way or that, or give it even a thought
More than by smoothest pathway may be brought
Into a vacant mind. Can written book
Teach what they learn? Up, hardy Mountaineer !
And guide the Bard, ambitious to be One
Of Nature's privy council, as thou art,

On cloud-sequestered heights, that see and hear
To what dread Powers 4 He delegates his part

5

ΙΟ

On earth, who works in the heaven of heavens, alone.

WELL sang the Bard who called the grave, in strains
Thoughtful and sad, the “narrow house.” * No style
Of fond sepulchral flattery can beguile

Grief of her sting; nor cheat, where he detains
The sleeping dust, stern Death. How reconcile
With truth, or with each other, decked remains
Of a once warm Abode, and that new Pile,
For the departed, built with curious pains
And mausolean pomp?† Yet here they stand
Together,—'mid trim walks and artful bowers,
To be looked down upon by ancient hills,
That, for the living and the dead, demand
And prompt a harmony of genuine powers;
Concord that elevates the mind, and stills.

5

ΙΟ

XIV

"REST AND BE THANKFUL!"

AT THE HEAD OF GLENCROE

DOUBLING and doubling with laborious walk,
Who, that has gained at length the wished-for Height,
This brief this simple way-side Call can slight,
And rests not thankful? Whether cheered by talk
With some loved friend, or by the unseen hawk

5

*This phrase is used by James Graham, in The Poor Man's Funeral; by Southey, in Joan of Arc (book viii.); by Ossian (frequently); and by Burns, in his Lament of Mary Queen of Scots (1. 53). Wordsworth probably refers to Burns.-ED.

Finlarig, near Killin, is the burial-place of the Breadalbane family. "The modern mausoleum occupies a solitary position in the vicinity of the old ruins."-ED.

Whistling to clouds and sky-born streams, that shine
At the sun's outbreak, as with light divine,
Ere they descend to nourish root and stalk
Of valley flowers. Nor, while the limbs repose,
Will we forget that, as the fowl can keep
Absolute stillness, poised aloft in air,

And fishes front, unmoved, the torrent's sweep,—

ΙΟ

So may the Soul, through powers that Faith bestows, Win rest, and ease, and peace, with bliss that Angels share.

XV

HIGHLAND HUT

SEE what gay wild flowers deck this earth-built Cot,
Whose smoke, forth-issuing whence and how it may,
Shines in the greeting of the sun's first ray

Like wreaths of vapour without stain or blot.
The limpid mountain rill avoids it not;

5

And why shouldst thou ?—If rightly trained and bred, Humanity is humble, finds no spot

Which her Heaven-guided feet refuse to tread.

The walls are cracked, sunk is the flowery roof,
Undressed the pathway leading to the door;
But love, as Nature loves, the lonely Poor ;
Search, for their worth, some gentle heart wrong-proof,
Meek, patient, kind, and, were its trials fewer,
Belike less happy.—Stand no more aloof!*

*This sonnet describes the exterior of a Highland hut, as often seen under morning or evening sunshine. To the authoress of the Address to the Wind, and other poems, in these volumes, who was my fellow-traveller in this tour, I am indebted for the following extract from her journal, which 1 accurately describes, under particular circumstances, the beautiful appearance of the interior of one of these rude habitations.

"On our return from the Trosachs the evening began to darken, and it

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sunshine. The reader may not be displeased with the following extract from the journal of a Lady, my fellow-traveller in Scotland in the autumn of 1803, which... 1835.

THE BROWNIE

297

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 (vol. vi. p. 16), to which the following 1 is a sequel.-W. W.

"How disappeared he?" Ask the newt and toad; Ask of his fellow men, and they will tell

1

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following Sonnet is

1835.

rained so heavily that we were completely wet before we had come two miles, and it was dark when we landed with our boatman, at his hut upon the banks of Loch Katrine. I was faint from cold: the good woman had provided, according to her promise, a better fire than we had found in the morning; and, indeed, when I sat down in the chimney-corner of her smoky biggin, I thought I had never felt more comfortable in my life: a pan of coffee was boiling for us, and, having put our clothes in the way of drying, we all sat down thankful for a shelter. We could not prevail upon our boatman, the master of the house, to draw near the fire, though he was cold and wet, or to suffer his wife to get him dry clothes till she had served us, which she did most willingly, though not very expeditiously.

"A Cumberland man of the same rank would not have had such a notion of what was fit and right in his own house, or, if he had, one would have accused him of servility; but in the Highlander it only seemed like politeness (however erroneous and painful to us), naturally growing out of the dependence of the inferiors of the clan upon their laird; he did not, however, refuse to let his wife bring out the whisky bottle for his refreshment, at our request. 'She keeps a dram,' as the phrase is indeed, I believe there is scarcely a lonely house by the wayside, in Scotland, where travellers may not be accommodated with a dram. We asked for sugar, butter, barley-bread, and milk; and, with a smile and a stare more of kindness than wonder, she replied, 'Ye'll get that,' bringing each article separately. We caroused our cups of coffee, laughing like children at the strange atmosphere in which we were: the smoke came in gusts, and spread along the walls; and above our heads in the chimney (where the hens were roosting) it appeared like clouds 1 in the sky. We laughed and laughed again, in spite of the smarting of our eyes, yet had a quieter pleasure in observing the beauty of the beams and rafters gleaming between the clouds of smoke: they had

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roosting) like clouds

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How he was found, cold as an icicle,

Under an arch of that forlorn abode ;

Where he, unpropp'd, and by the gathering flood
Of years hemm'd round, had dwelt, prepared to try
Privation's worst extremities, and die

With no one near save the omnipresent God.
Verily so to live was an awful choice—

5

been crusted over, and varnished by many winters, till, where the firelight fell upon them, they had become as glossy as black rocks, on a sunny day, cased in ice. When we had eaten our supper we sat about half an hour, and I think I never felt so deeply the blessing of a hospitable welcome and a warm fire. The man of the house repeated from time to time that we should often tell of this night when we got to our homes, and interposed praises of his own lake, which he had more than once, when we were returning in the boat, ventured to say was 'bonnier than Loch Lomond.' Our companion from the Trosachs, who, it appeared, was an Edinburgh drawing - master going, during the vacation, on a pedestrian tour to John o' Groat's house, was to sleep in the barn with my fellow-travellers, where the man said he had plenty of dry hay. I do not believe that the hay of the Highlands is ever very dry, but this year it had a better chance than usual: wet or dry, however, the next morning they said they had slept comfortably. When I went to bed, the mistress, desiring me to go ben,' attended me with a candle, and assured me that the bed was dry, though not 'sic as I had been used to.' It was of chaff; there were two others in the room, a cupboard and two chests, upon one of which stood milk in wooden vessels, covered over. The walls of the house were of stone unplastered: it consisted of three apartments, the cowhouse at one end, the kitchen or house in the middle, and the spence at the other end; the rooms were divided, not up to the rigging, but only to the beginning of the roof, so that there was a free passage for light and smoke from one end of the house to the other. I went to bed some time before the rest of the family; the door was shut between us, and they had a bright fire, which I could not see, but the light it sent up amongst the varnished rafters and beams, which crossed each other in almost as intricate and fantastic a manner as I have seen the under-boughs of a large beech tree withered by the depth of shade above, produced the most beautiful effect that can be conceived. It was like what I should suppose an underground cave or temple to be, with a dripping or moist roof, and the moonlight entering in upon it by some means or other; and yet the colours were more like those of melted gems. I lay looking up till the light of the fire faded away, and the man and his wife and child had crept into their bed at the other end of the room: I did not sleep much, but passed a comfortable night; for my bed, though hard, was warm and clean: the unusualness of my situation prevented me from sleeping. I could hear the waves beat against the shore of the lake: a little rill close to the door made a much louder noise, and, when I sat up in my bed, I could see the lake through an open window-place at the bed's head. Add to this, it rained all night. I was less occupied by remembrance of the Trosachs, beautiful as they were, than the vision of the Highland hut, which I could not get out of my head; I thought of the Faery-land of Spenser, and what I had read in romance at other times; and then what a feast it would be for a London Pantomime-maker could he but transplant it to Drury-lane, with all its beautiful colours !"-MS. W. W. 1835.

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among

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