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2.

THE SOLITARY REAPER.

Behold her, single in the field,

Yon solitary Highland Lass!
Reaping and singing by herself;
Stop here, or gently pass!

Alone she cuts, and binds the grain,
And sings a melancholy strain;
O listen! for the Vale profound
Is overflowing with the sound.

No Nightingale did ever chaunt
So sweetly to reposing bands

Of Travellers in some shady haunt,
Among Arabian Sands:

No sweeter voice was ever heard

In spring-time from the Cuckoo-bird, Breaking the silence of the seas Among the farthest Hebrides.

Will no one tell me what she sings ?
Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow

For old, unhappy, far-off things,
And battles long ago :

Or is it some more humble lay,
Familiar matter of today?

Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,

That has been, and may be again!

Whate'er the theme, the Maiden sung
As if her song could have no ending;
I saw her singing at her work,

And o'er the sickle bending;
I listen'd till I had my fill:
And, as I mounted up the hill,
The music in my heart I bore,
Long after it was heard no more.

3.

STEPPING WESTWARD.

While my Fellow-traveller and I were walking by the side of Loch Ketterine, one fine evening after sun-set, in our road to a Hut where in the course of our Tour we had been hospitably entertained some weeks before, we met, in one of the loneliest parts of that solitary region, two well dressed Women, one of whom said to us, by way of greeting, "What you are stepping westward?"

"What you are stepping westward ? ”

"Yea."

-'Twould be a wildish destiny,

If we, who thus together roam

In a strange Land, and far from home,
Were in this place the guests of Chance:
Yet who would stop, or fear to advance,
Though home or shelter he had none,
With such a Sky to lead him on ?

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The dewy ground was dark and cold;
Behind, all gloomy to behold;
And stepping westward seem'd to be
A kind of heavenly destiny;

I liked the greeting; 'twas a sound
Of something without place or bound;
And seem'd to give me spiritual right
To travel through that region bright.

The voice was soft, and she who spake Was walking by her native Lake:

The salutation had to me

The very sound of courtesy:

It's power was felt; and while my eye
Was fixed upon the glowing sky,
The echo of the voice enwrought

A human sweetness with the thought
Of travelling through the world that lay
Before me in my endless way.

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