Part 2 / Act 5 — DUNPENDER LAW.
Reading edition
Fann’d by the balmy breathing west,
On green Dunpender’s[25] brow I rest,
Musing on cliffs and towers below,
Where forests wave and rivulets flow;
Far, in the gold-emblazon’d sky,
The Pentland-hills in grandeur lie,
Where erst the gentle shepherd stray’d,
Fond lilting to his pastoral maid;
While Arthur Seat his shadow shews
Like lion couchant, in repose;
And the tower-crown’d Calton gleams,
Bathed in day’s departing beams;
And mingled with the hues of even,
The Fifean shores seem propping heaven.
Oft through the opening shades between
The silvery Forth is winding seen,
Where vessels with their white sails glide,
Like insects sporting on the tide,
390That glisten in the noontide ray,
And with the evening fade away.
As the blithe lark that long has stray’d
Through distant woodland’s mazy shade,
Bewilder’d turns on wearied wing,
To thickets where her nestlings sing,
So fondly turns my partial eye
To dearer scenes that nearer lie,
Where plantings fair and hawthorn hedge
Shadow Garleton’s sloping edge,
And through shades of softer green
Beanston’s modest face is seen,
While in yonder flowery lawn,
So calm at eve, so bright at dawn,
Shooting from the leafy bowers
Amisfield’s massy palace towers;
And farther on, in misty clouds,
The church her solemn figure shrouds,
Haddina’s fane sublimely hoar,
Where good St Francis reign’d of yore.
The organ’s voice no longer steals
Through her aisles in solemn peals,
Dimm’d her lamp, whose glowworm ray
Cheer’d lonely pilgrim’s midnight way.
The mass has ceased—the monks are gone;
For time has sapp’d the papal throne.
391O Edwin! thou wilt ne’er forget
How lagg’d the hours before we met
To muse within that hallow’d fane.
Tired of the world’s bustling scene,
We gladly hail’d the close of day,
In peaceful star-light shades to stray,
When moonlight shed enchantment round
O’er all the church’s holy ground,
While echo’d to thy flute’s deep thrill
The Gothic arch, the murmuring rill;
Then thought we of mysterious sounds,
While pacing the dark echoing grounds:
Such sounds as startle with affright
The waylaid swain at dead of night;
And though our cares were never few,
Still Fancy brighten’d all she drew,
And Hope those flowery visions wrought,
That perish’d with maturer thought.
Fair Tyne! thy river smoothly glides
To mingle with the ocean’s tides,
And though thy windings may not boast
The rushing stream in cataracts lost,
O’erhung with ivied rocks and woods,
Like Clyde or Esk’s romantic floods,
Yet Sol, in all his flaming chase,
Beholds no river’s crystal face,
392That waters meads more rich with grain
Than those he meets on Lothian’s plain;
Whether by Crichton’s lordly towers
Thy rivulet winds ’neath lofty bowers;
Whether by Salton’s coverts gay,
Where patriot Fletcher loved to stray;
Or where, near Preston’s ancient fane,
Thy waters mingle with the main.
Next wandering down thy stream I spy
Stevenson’s woods that sombre lie,
Spreading thick their branches dun,
Bronzed with the setting sun;
Clouds of rooks are sailing near,
Stunning Meditation’s ear,
As she sits with sober look,
Gazing on the running brook.
Is there aught can sooth the mind,
Like the moanings of the wind?
Is there aught that can recall
Our thoughts, like water’s constant fall?
Beneath me, Hailes delights to trace
In shady Tyne his furrow’d face:
Though there the peasant rears his shed
Where Valour sleeps in gory bed,
Yet Tyne has seen that castle’s crest
More brightly gleaming on her breast,
393When, in a dark and stormy hour,
His arms received the regal flower;
I give, forgetting Mary’s crimes,
(In pity for those faithless times,)
The tear the generous heart bestows
When weeping over beauty’s woes;
For all that birth and beauty gave
Was to betray—and not to save:
Thus, in some lone sequester’d cot,
Contented with her humble lot,
Far from Ambition’s giddy steeps
The peasant girl on roses sleeps,
While she whom fawning courts caress
Must drink the dregs of bitterness.
The lofty Law[26] on yonder lands
In towering Alpine grandeur stands,
Where, as tradition says, were seen
A fairy host in garbs of green,
Who, when the housewife barr’d the door,
Would curse the dairy’s mantling store,
And snatch the stolen child, and free
Its form from dull mortality.
Gleaming, where birds of snowy hue
Their jubilee spend, the Bass I view;
394And dimly frowns Tantallon’s holde,
Where Douglas reign’d, too rashly bold;
While Tyningham’s delicious woods
Luxuriant rush to ocean’s floods;
And soon my rapt eye rests afar
Where shadows mantle old Dunbar.
But now the thrush with plaintive lay
Charms the soft closing ear of day;
The sinking sun with blushing fires
Crimsons heaven, and fast retires,
Bathing in hues of browner light
Linton’s hamlets gleaming bright;
A thousand birds their vespers pour,
And droops its head the drowsy flower,
As like yon star, that rises slow,
The May’s pale light begins to glow,
Revolving o’er the waters hoary,
Now lost like beams of joy in sorrow;
While down the mountain’s side I wind,
I often pause to gaze behind,
As lovers linger to survey
Their parting shadows steal away.
395