Note 89 — POEMS OF JULY-SEPTEMBER, 1816. THE DREAM.
Reading edition
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"He who first met the Highland's swelling blue, Will love each peak, that shows a kindred hue, Hail in each crag a friend's familiar face, And clasp the mountain in his mind's embrace."
The Island, Canto II. stanza xii. lines 9-12.
His "friends are mountains." He comes back to them as to a "holier land," where he may find not happiness, but peace.
Moore was inclined to attribute Byron's "love of mountain prospects" in his childhood to the "after-result of his imaginative recollections of that period," but (as Wilson, commenting on Moore, suggests) it is easier to believe that the "high instincts" of the "poetic child" did not wait for association to consecrate the vision (Life, p. 8).]