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XIII.

Onward, amid the copse 'gan peep
A narrow inlet, still and deep,

Affording scarce such breadth of brim,1
As served the wild duck's brood to swim.
Lost for a space, through thickets veering,
But broader when again appearing,
Tall rocks and tufted knolls their face
Could on the dark-blue mirror trace;
And farther as the Hunter stray'd,
Still broader sweep its channels made.
The shaggy mounds no longer stood,
Emerging from entangled wood,*
But, wave-encircl'd, seem'd to float,
Like castle girdled with its moat;
Yet broader floods extending still
Divide them from their parent hill,
Till each, retiring, claims to be
An islet in an inland sea.

XIV.

And now, to issue from the glen,
No pathway meets the wanderer's ken,
Unless he climb, with footing nice,
A far projecting precipice."

1 [MS." Affording scarce such breadth of flood,
As served to float the wild-duck's brood."]

2 [MS. "Emerging dry-shod from the wood."]

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Until the present road was made through the romantic pass

The broom's tough roots his ladder made,
The hazel saplings lent their aid;
And thus an airy point he won,
Where, gleaming with the setting sun,
One burnish'd sheet of living gold,
Loch Katrine lay beneath him roll'd,1
In all her length far winding lay,
With promontory, creek, and bay,
And islands that, empurpled bright,
Floated amid the livelier light,
And mountains, that like giants stand,
To sentinel enchanted land.

High on the south, huge Benvenue"

Down on the lake in masses threw
Crags, knolls, and mounds, confusedly hurl'd,
The fragments of an earlier world;
A wildering forest feather'd o'er
His ruin'd sides and summit hoar,3

which I have presumptuously attempted to describe in the preceding stanzas, there was no mode of issuing out of the defile called the Trosachs, excepting by a sort of ladder, composed of the branches and roots of trees.

1 [Loch-Ketturin is the Celtic pronunciation. In his Notes to The Fair Maid of Perth, the author has signified his belief that the lake was named after the Catterins, or wild robbers, who haunted its shores.]

2 [Benvenue-is literally the little mountain-i. e. as contrasted with Benledi and Benlomond.]

3 [MS.-"His ruined sides and fragments hoar

While on the north to middle air."]

While on the north, through middle air,
Ben-an1 heaved high his forehead bare.2

XV.

From the steep promontory gazed3
The stranger, raptured and amazed.

And, "What a scene were here,” he cried,
"For princely pomp, or churchman's pride!
On this bold brow, a lordly tower;

In that soft vale, a lady's bower;
On yonder meadow, far away,
The turrets of a cloister grey;
How blithely might the bugle-horn

Chide, on the lake, the lingering morn!

How sweet, at eve, the lover's lute

Chime, when the groves were still and mute!

1 [According to Graham, Ben-an, or Bennan, is a mere diminutive of Ben-Mountain.]

2 [Perhaps the art of landscape-painting in poetry, has never been displayed in higher perfection than in these stanzas, to which rigid criticism might possibly object that the picture is somewhat too minute, and that the contemplation of it detains the traveller somewhat too long from the main purpose of his pilgrimage, but which it would be an act of the greatest injustice to break into fragments, and present by piecemeal. Not so the magnificent scene which bursts upon the bewildered hunter as he emerges at length from the dell, and commands at one view the beautifu expanse of Loch Katrine."-Critical Review, August 1820.] 3 [MS.-"From the high promontory gazed

The stranger, awe-struck and amazed."]

And, when the midnight moon should lave
Her forehead in the silver wave,

How solemn on the ear would come
The holy matins' distant hum,
While the deep peal's commanding tone
Should wake, in yonder islet lone,
A sainted hermit from his cell,
To drop a bead with every knell-
And bugle, lute, and bell, and all,
Should each bewilder'd stranger call
To friendly feast and lighted hall.1

XVI.

"Blithe were it then to wander here!
But now,-beshrew yon nimble deer,—
Like that same hermit's, thin and spare,
The copse must give my evening fare ;
Some mossy bank my couch must be,
Some rustling oak my canopy.2
Yet pass we that; the war and chase
Give little choice of resting-place ;—
A summer night, in greenwood spent,
Were but to-morrow's merriment :
But hosts may in these wilds abound,
Such as are better missed than found;

1 [MS.-"To hospitable feast and hall."]
MS.-" And hollow trunk of some old tree.

My chamber for the night must be."]

To meet with Highland plunderers here,
Were worse than loss of steed or deer.-1
I am alone ;-my bugle-strain

May call some straggler of the train;
Or, fall the worst that may betide,
Ere now this falchion has been tried."

XVII.

But scarce again his horn he wound,2
When lo! forth starting at the sound,

1 The clans who inhabited the romantic regions in the neighbourhood of Loch Katrine, were, even until a late period, much addicted to predatory excursions upon their Lowland neighbours. "In former times, those parts of this district, which are situated beyond the Grampian range, were rendered almost inaccessible by strong barriers of rocks, and mountains, and lakes. It was a border country, and though on the very verge of the low country, it was almost totally sequestered from the world, and, as it were, insulated with respect to society. 'Tis well known that in the Highlands, it was, in former times, accounted not only lawful, but honourable, among hostile tribes, to commit depredations on one another; and these habits of the age were perhaps strengthened in this district by the circumstances which have been mentioned. It bordered on a country, the inhabitants of which, while they were richer, were less warlike than they, and widely differenced by language and manners.”—GRAHAM's Sketches of Scenery in Perthshire, Edin. 1806, p. 97. The reader will therefore be pleased to remember, that the scene of this poem is laid in a time,

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"When tooming faulds, or sweeping of a glen,
Had still been held the deed of gallant men.

[MS.-" The bugle shrill again he wound,

And lo forth starting at the sound."]

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