VOICES FROM THE MOUNTAINS.
VOICES FROM THE MOUNTAINS.
'WE three are young; we have a month to spare: Money enough; and, whistling off our care, We can forsake the turmoil of the town,
And tread the wilds — making our faces brown
With sunshine, on the peaks of some high Ben.
Let us away
three glad, unburden'd men
And trace some mountain-torrent to its source,
Mid fern, and heather, juniper, and gorse,
Braving all weathers. I, with gun, one day
Will cater for you, and go forth to slay
The grouse in corries, where it loves to dwell;
Or sit with you, upon some granite-fell,
And talk for hours of high philosophy,
Or sun ourselves in warmth of poesy:
And should these tire, with rod in hand, we'll go
To streams that leap too frolicsome to flow
Angling for trout, and catch them by themselves,
In fancied citadel, beneath the shelves
Of slippery stone, o'er which the waters rush.
Let us away. My cheeks and forehead flush
At the mere thought; so glad would be
my soul
To be alone with Nature for one whole
Untrammell'd month-having no thought of dross
Or dull entanglements of gain and loss;
Of Blackstone drear, or Barnewell's Reports,
Or aught that smells of lawyers and the courts.
Let us away, this pleasant summer time,
Thou, Karl, canst muse, and shape the tuneful rhyme
Amidst thy well-beloved hills and straths:
Thou, Patrick, canst ascend the mountain-paths,
Thy well-filled flask in pocket, and rehearse
Plain prose with me, as genial as his verse;
And wet or whet each argumental flaw
With running waters, dashed with usquebaugh.'
Thus Alistor, a Templar keen and young,
Of a clear head, and of a fluent tongue; ·
Subtle logician, but with earnest mind,
And heart brimful of hope for human kind,
Spake to his friends; and him, with voice of cheer,
Answer'd the rhymer: 'Half one toilsome year
I've moiled in cities, and, like thee, I long
To see the placid lochs, the torrents strong.
The purple moors, the white rocks, crimson-crowned,
And amber waters, in their depths embrowned.
One month of freedom, from the drowsy thrall
Of custom, would be health, joy, wisdom, all,
To us who know each other, and delight
To be let loose into the infinite
Of our own fancies - free from task and rule,
And all the stiff conventions of the school
Of the great world. Our tyrant, lean-faced care,
Shall not pursue us to the mountain air,
If we play truant. Let us hence away,
And have one month of pleasure while we may.'
Patrick, the rough in speech, the true in heart,
A sculptor, born to elevate his art,
And loving it with fervor, such as burned
In old Pygmalion's spirit, when he yearned
For the sweet image that his hands had made,
Shouted consent. 'But whither bound?' he said,
'What far off mountain-summit shall we scale?
What salt-sea loch, winding through many a vale,
Shall we explore? Or shall we rather glide
Through lakes inland, unruffled by a tide ?-
Not that it matters. Thou, friend poet, know'st
Better than we all grandeurs of the coast:
The lochs, the straths, the hoary-headed Bens,
The windy corries, and the wild, green glens,
And all the thunderous waterfalls that leap
Betwixt the Atlantic and the German deep;
And we will follow, if our guide thou❜lt be,
By Lomond, Linnhe, Lochy, or Maree;
Through Rosshire moors, to Hebridean isle,
Or mid the lordly mountains of Argyll,
Where'er thou wilt.' The poet made reply,
With a keen pleasure sparkling in his eye :
'There is a valley, beautifully lone,
Rude of access, to few but hunters known :
A glen so full of grey magnificence,
Of rock and mountain, that with love intense,
Salvator's self, if thither he had strayed,
Might, rapture-struck, a dwelling-place have made
Of some wild nook. There filled with ecstasies,
He might have sat, his spirit in his eyes,
And all his mind impregnate, till he wrought
On the dumb canvas an immortal thought.
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