6. The King was lost, and much conjecture past. At length the morning rose in lightsome blue, Up rose the fringed sun, and softly threw 7. The steeps of proud Ben-Glow the nobles scaled, For there they heard their Monarch's bugle yell; First on the height, the beauteous morn he hail'd, And rested, wondering, on the heather bell. The amber blaze that tipt the moor and fell, The fleecy clouds that roll'd afar below, The hounds' impatient whine, the bugle's swell, Raised in his breast a more than wonted glow. The nobles found him pleased, nor farther strove to know. 8. The driver circle narrow'd on the heath, Close, and more close, the deer were bounding bye; Upon the bow-string lies the shaft of death! Breathless impatience burns in every eye! At once a thousand winged arrows fly; The grayhound up the glen outstrips the wind; At once the slow-hounds' music rends the sky, The hunter's whoop and hallo cheers behind! Haloo! away they speed! swift as the course of mind! 9. There roll'd the bausin'd hind adown the linn, Transfix'd by arrow from the Border bow; There the poor roe-deer quakes the cliff within, O'er hill, o'er dale, they mock thy hounds and thee; Or soon they gain the steeps, and pathless woods of Dee. B 10. Halloo, o'er hill and dale! the slot is warm! To every cliff the bugle lends a bell; On to the northward peals the loud alarm, And ay the brocket and the sorel fell: But flying still before the mingled yell, The gallant herd outspeeds the troubled wind; Their rattling antlers brush the birken dell; Their haughty eyes the rolling tear-drops blind; But onward still they speed, and look not once behind! 11. The Tilt is vanish'd on the upland gray, The Tarf is dwindled to a foaming rill; But many a hound lay gasping by the way, Bathed in the stream, or stretch'd upon the hill; The cooling brook with burning jaws they swill, Nor once will deign to scent the tainted ground: The herd has cross'd Breriach's gulfing gill, The Athol forest's formidable bound, And in the Garcharye a last retreat have found. 12. One hound alone has cross'd the dreary height, The deep-toned Jowler, ever staunch and true. But never more shall eye of monarch view So wild a scene of mountain majesty As Scotland's King beheld from the tall peaks of Dee. On 18. gray Macduich's upmost verge he stood, The loftiest cone of all that desart dun; The seas afar were streamer'd o'er with blood! Dark forests waved, and winding waters run! For nature glow'd beneath the evening sun; The western shadows dark'ning every dale, Where dens of gloom, the sight of man to shun, Lay shrouded in impervious magic veil ; While o'er them pour'd the rays of light so lovely pale. 14. But O what bard could sing the onward sight! The piles that frown'd, the gulfs that yawn'd beneath! Downward a thousand fathoms from the height, Grim as the caverns in the land of death! Like mountains shatter'd in th' Eternal's wrath, When fiends their banners 'gainst his reign unfurl'd➡ A grisly wilderness! a land of scathe! Rocks upon rocks in dire confusion hurl'd! A rent and formless mass, the rubbish of a world. 15. As if by lost pre-eminence abased, Hill behind hill erected locks of gray, And every misty morion was upraised, To speak their farewell to the God of Day: When tempests rave along their polar way, Not closer rear the billows of the deep, Shining with silver foam, and maned with spray, As up the mid-way heaven they war and sweep, Then, foil'd and chafed to rage, roll down the broken steep. |