3. STEPPING WESTWARD.
Reading edition
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?
The dewy ground was dark and cold; Behind, all gloomy to behold; 10 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: 20 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.
4. GLEN-ALMAIN, or the NARROW GLEN
In this still place, remote from men, Sleeps Ossian, in the NARROW GLEN; In this still place, where murmurs on But one meek Streamlet, only one: He sang of battles, and the breath Of stormy war, and violent death; And should, methinks, when all was past, Have rightfully been laid at last Where rocks were sudely heap'd, and rent As by a spirit turbulent; 10 Where sights were rough, and sounds were wild, And every thing unreconciled; In some complaining, dim retreat, For fear and melancholy meet; But this is calm; there cannot be A more entire tranquillity.
Does then the Bard sleep here indeed? Or is it but a groundless creed? What matters it? I blame them not Whose Fancy in this lonely Spot 20 Was moved; and in this way express'd Their notion of its perfect rest. A Convent, even a hermit's Cell Would break the silence of this Dell: It is not quiet, is not ease; But something deeper far than these: The separation that is here Is of the grave; and of austere And happy feelings of the dead: And, therefore, was it rightly said 30 That Ossian, last of all his race! Lies buried in this lonely place.