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BEAUTIES OF MODERN POETS.

Scott.

LOCH CORISKIN.

A WHILE their route they silent made,

As men who stalk for mountain-deer, Till the good Bruce to Ronald said,

"St. Mary! what a scene is here!

I've traversed many a mountain-strand,
Abroad and in my native land,
And it has been my lot to tread
Where safety more than pleasure led ;

Thus many a waste I've wander'd o'er,
Clomb many a crag, cross'd many a moor,

But by my halidome,

A scene so rude, so wild as this,

Yet so sublime in barrenness,

Ne'er did my wandering footsteps press,

Where'er I happ'd to roam."

No marvel thus the Monarch spake:

For rarely human eye has known
A scene so stern as that dread lake,

With its dark ledge of barren stone.
Seems that primeval earthquake's sway
Hath rent a strange and shatter'd way
Through the rude bosom of the hill,
And that each naked precipice,
Sable ravine, and dark abyss,

Tells of the outrage still.

The wildest glen, but this, can show
Some touch of Nature's genial glow.
On high Benmore green mosses grow,
And heath-bells bud in deep Glencroe,
And copse on Cruchan-Ben;

But here,-above, around, below,

On mountain or in glen,

Nor tree, nor shrub, nor plant, nor flower,

Nor aught of vegetative power,

The weary eye may ken.

For all is rocks at random thrown,

Black waves, bare crags, and banks of stone,

As if were here denied

The summer sun, the spring's sweet dew,

That clothe with many a varied hue
The bleakest mountain-side.

And wilder, forward as they wound,
Were the proud cliffs and lake profound.

Huge terraces of granite black
Afforded rude and cumber'd track;

For from the mountain hoar,
Hurl'd headlong in some night of fear,
When yell'd the wolf and fled the deer,
Loose crags had toppled o'er;

And some, chance-poised and balanced, lay,
So that a stripling arm might sway
A mass no host could raise,
In Nature's rage at random thrown,
Yet trembling like the Druid's stone

On its precarious base.

Lord of the Isles.

VIEW OF EDINBURGH FROM BLACKFORD HILL.

STILL on the spot Lord Marmion stay'd,

For fairer scene he ne'er survey'd.

When sated with the martial show

That peopled all the plain below,
The wandering eye could o'er it go,
And mark the distant city glow

With gloomy splendour red;

For on the smoke-wreaths, huge and slow,
That round her sable turrets flow,

The morning beams were shed,

And tinged them with a lustre proud.

Like that which streaks a thunder-cloud.

Such dusky grandeur clothed the height
Where the huge Castle holds its state,
And all the steep slope down,

Whose ridgy back heaves to the sky,
Piled deep and massy, close and high,—
Mine own romantic town!
But northward far, with purer blaze,
On Ochil mountains fell the rays;
And as each heathy top they kissed,
It gleamed a purple amethyst.
Yonder the shores of Fife you saw,
Here Preston-Bay and Berwick-Law;
And, broad between them roll'd,
The gallant Frith the eye might note,
Whose islands on its bosom float,

Like emeralds chased in gold.

"Nor less," he said,--" when looking forth,

I view yon Empress of the North

Sit on her hilly throne;

Her palace's imperial bowers,
Her castle, proof to hostile powers,
Her stately halls and holy towers."

Marmion.