The mist, retreating, gems the leaves with dew,
 Soft blows the breeze along the fragrant meads,
 A little brawling burn runs through the reeds
 And ripples away under the cloudless blue.
 I never saw the world so fair to view,
 For Spring has riven old Winter's funeral weeds
 And given new sap and vigour to the seeds
 That lay inanimate the cold months through.
 Old man! with jaded limbs and wrinkled brow,
 That walkest feebly in this lenient sun
 Like a day-dream, thy life is winter now.
 But life and death in ceaseless cycles run,
 And tireless Time and Heaven have in store
 For thee a myriad resurrections more.

XVII.

GENERAL WADE.

Houses are fewer here than milestones are:
 We stand a thousand feet aloft in air
 Upon a bouldered hillside stern and bare,
 Down which the roadway serpentines afar.
 There are no clouds in the wide blue to mar
 The passage of the sun's imperial glare
 Over a dreary-stretching landscape, where
 Rough winds hold riot all the calendar.
 Who that has footed o'er these firm-knit paths
 But lauds the men whose strenuous axe and spade
 Drove roads through the wild glens and hilly straths
 Under the generalship of tireless Wade!
 On the safe tracks behind them, commerce came
 The unruly spirit of the Celt to tame.

XVIII.

THE SOUND OF RAASAY IN DECEMBER.

A snowy gust is whirling down the strait,
 Raasay is gleaming ghostly to the sight,
 And, robed in lawn, from sea to topmost height
 Skye and her lordly mountains stand in state.
 Ever from heaven falls the silent weight
 Of wavering flakes that dim the stars of night.
 Our gallant little boat with all the might
 Of the wild-hissing surges holds debate,
 Plunging and struggling, till at last we see
 A spacious haven, sudden and serene
 And, high aloft, the twinkle of Portree.
 At once the winds are hushed, the moon is seen
 To free her face from cloudy drift, and fill
 With silver light the clefts of Essie Hill.

XIX.

LES NEIGES D'ANTAN.

I.

Where is Macfee, that valiant preacher,
 Gifted with voice, so harsh and loud,
 Aye, louder and harsher than any screecher
 Of birds that sail on the black storm-cloud?
 And his beadle John, with back so bowed,
 Where is he that had never a peer?
 Is he too rolled in his mortal shroud?
 But where are the snows of yester-year?

II.

Donald the Gay, that steered his steamer
 Many a year through the Sound of Mull,
 He that was never a Celtic dreamer,
 But a captain of captains masterful:
 O Death, thou madest the world more dull
 When you nailed him down in his narrow bier,
 And sent his ghost into Charon's hull;
 But where are the snows of yester-year?

III.

Duncan, the bard of rocky Staffin,
 Away in the north of rainy Skye:
 Has he given over his rimes and daffin',
 In the mould of the bleak kirkyard to lie?
His cot was built where the sea-gulls fly,
 And his misty isle to his soul was dear;
 Ere his song is finished, the bard must die;
 But where are the snows of yester-year?

IV.

And Dougal, who carried King Edward's mails
 Every day o'er the moor and heather,
 Scorning the chill of the winter gales,
 And the ten-mile walk in the sultry weather:
 Has he too come to the end of his tether
 And gone to the ghosts with all his gear,
 His whistle, his satchel and strap of leather?
 But where are the snows of yester-year?

V.

Prince, they have gone from the regions that knew them,
 Gone at the summons that none can resist,
 Praise and every honour be to them,
 They did their best and they will be missed.
 We, too, shall soon be erased from the list
 Of workers below in this mortal sphere,
 And be no more to those that exist
 Than the vanished snows of yester-year.

XX.

THE ISLANDS OF THE NESS.

A fairyland of trees and leafy bowers
 Where one may sit and dream the hours away,
 Or 'mid the devious walks and alleys stray,
 While perfume rises from a world of flowers,
 The girdling river, swollen with upland showers,
 Sends rippling round to every creek and bay
 The vagrant branches of his water-way;
 Then gathering up his current's parted powers,
 Swiftly-majestic in a broadening bed,
 He glistens on by many a chiming spire,
 And past the castle's pennoned turrets red,
 Till he attain the goal of his desire,
 And into the salt sea exulting throws
 His subsidy of rains and melted snows.

XXI.

AMERICAN TOURIST LOQUITUR
(AT BERRIEDALE, CAITHNESS).

If I had wealth like Vanderbilt
 Or some such millionaire,
 I'd live in Scotland, don a kilt,
 And pay to prove my forbears spilt
 Their blood in forays there.
I'd buy a picturesque estate
 Beside the ocean's flow,
 With knolls of heather at my gate,
 And pine-clad hills to dominate,
 The ferny dells below.
I'd be a father to the folk
 That laboured on the soil,
 With old and young I'd crack my joke,
 Drink with them in their thirst, and smoke
 The pipe that lightens toil.
For hens I'd have a special run,
 For ducks a special pool,
 My calves should frolic in the sun,
 My sheep should be surpassed by none
 Whose backs are clothed with wool.
Although I'm not a Walton quite,
 Betweenwhiles I should try
 To lure the finny tribe to bite
 (At the right time, in the right light,)
 My simulated fly.
When winter heaped his rattling hail
 High on the window sill,
 With pipe and wassail, rime and tale,
 I'd never miss the nightingale
 Or cuckoo on the hill.
Nay, musing by the ingle-lowe
 With summer in my brain,
 I'd cloth with leaves the frozen bough
 And all the ice-bound brooks endow
 With tinkling life again.[37]

XXII.

THE MINERS.

The afternoon is cool and calm,
 Near by flashes the mighty sea,
 Inland rise green, dewy hills,
 Crowned with eye-bewitching trees.
Suddenly the eye is amazed and terrified,
 A hideous procession sordid and grimy
 Of men and boys, slaves of the coal-pit,
 Is seen on the road, shaming the daylight.
All the day long they work in the darkness,
 Far from the songs of the birds and the sunshine,
 Now they return to their sordid villages,
 Ill-smelling rows of comfortless cottages.
The rich and dainty ladies of fashion
 Stand aloof from these swart coal-hewers,
 Are ready to swoon as the air is poisoned
 With odours of subterranean foulness.
Coarse of look, and of speech far coarser!
 Laughter loud with no merriment in it!
 No more soul than the beasts that perish!
 These are the men despised for their toiling.

XXIII.

IN A COUNTRY GRAVEYARD.[38]

Man dreads the tomb, but dreads oblivion more;
 He fears, when death has loosed the load of years,
 His name shall cease to sound in mortal ears,
 And, in the dusty darkness, all be o'er.
 Some o'er the scrolls of ample science pore,
 Tome after tome the nimble authors write,
 And gain a meed of glory: soon the night
 Comes: the author with his laurel disappears,
 The painting fades, the marble busts decay,
 The kingly structures fall in ruin down,
 Devouring Time consumes the artist's prize,
 The centuries like lightning pass away,
 Or hurrying billows: emperor and clown
 Sink with the myriads in impartial clay.

XXIV.

NO PLACE LIKE HOME.

Where'er these wandering footsteps lead me to,
 Peak-dominated glen, hill where the sheep
 Graze in the sun, mountains that ever keep
 A solemn guard o'er lakes profound and blue,
 Or undulating tracts of treeless view;
 No matter if the rain and whirlwind sweep
 The landscape, or the gladdening sunshine peep
 Through muffled vapours that the winds undo;
 Let it be night speckled with myriad fires,
 Clear dawn, hot noon, or cool of dying day;
 Be it in cities with their chiming spires,
 Or country fields with fragrant ricks of hay;
 Ever the voices of my hearth I hear,
 And muse on those to me for ever dear.

INDEX
(Chiefly of Proper Names).

FOOTNOTES.