Scott's Lady of the Lake. Walter Scott

      Onward, amid the copse ’gan peep

      A narrow inlet, still and deep,

      Affording scarce such breadth of brim

      As served the wild duck’s brood to swim.

      Lost for a space, through thickets veering,

      But broader when again appearing,

      Tall rocks and tufted knolls their face

      Could on the dark-blue mirror trace;

      And farther as the Hunter stray’d,

      Still broader sweep its channel made.

      The shaggy mounds no longer stood,

      Emerging from the tangled wood,

      But, wave-encircled, seem’d to float,

      Like castle girdled with its moat;

      Yet broader floods extending still

      Divide them from their parent hill,

      Till each, retiring, claims to be

      An islet in an inland sea.

      And now, to issue from the glen,

      No pathway meets the wanderer’s ken,

      Unless he climb, with footing nice,38

      A far projecting precipice.

      The broom’s39 tough roots his ladder made,

      The hazel saplings lent their aid;

      And thus an airy point he won,

      Where, gleaming with the setting sun,

      One burnish’d sheet of living gold,

      Loch Katrine lay beneath him roll’d,

      In all her length far winding lay,

      With promontory, creek, and bay,

      And islands that, empurpled bright,40

      Floated amid the livelier light,

      And mountains, that like giants stand,

      To sentinel enchanted land.

      High on the south, huge Benvenue

      Down on the lake in masses threw

      Crags, knolls, and mounds, confusedly hurl’d,

      The fragments of an earlier world;

      A wildering forest feather’d o’er

      His ruin’d sides and summit hoar,

      While on the north, through middle air,

      Ben-an41 heaved high his forehead bare.

      From the steep promontory gazed

      The stranger, raptured and amazed,

      And, “What a scene were here,” he cried,

      “For princely pomp, or churchman’s pride!

      On this bold brow, a lordly tower;

      In that soft vale, a lady’s bower;

      On yonder meadow, far away,

      The turrets of a cloister gray;

      How blithely might the bugle horn

      Chide, on the lake, the lingering morn!

      How sweet, at eve, the lover’s lute

      Chime, when the groves were still and mute!

      And, when the midnight moon should lave

      Her forehead in the silver wave,

      How solemn on the ear would come

      The holy matins’42 distant hum,

      While the deep peal’s commanding tone

      Should wake, in yonder islet lone,

      A sainted hermit from his cell,

      To drop a bead43 with every knell —

      And bugle, lute, and bell, and all,

      Should each bewilder’d stranger call

      To friendly feast, and lighted hall.

      “Blithe were it then to wander here!

      But now, – beshrew yon nimble deer, —

      Like that same hermit’s, thin and spare,

      The copse must give my evening fare;

      Some mossy bank my couch must be,

      Some rustling oak my canopy.

      Yet pass we that; the war and chase

      Give little choice of resting place; —

      A summer night, in greenwood spent,

      Were but to-morrow’s merriment:

      But hosts may in these wilds abound,

      Such as are better miss’d than found;

      To meet with Highland plunderers here

      Were worse than loss of steed or deer. —

      I am alone; – my bugle strain

      May call some straggler of the train;

      Or, fall44 the worst that may betide,

      Ere now this falchion has been tried.”

      But scarce again his horn he wound,

      When lo! forth starting at the sound,

      From underneath an aged oak,

      That slanted from the islet rock,

      A damsel guider of its way,

      A little skiff shot to the bay,

      That round the promontory steep

      Led its deep line in graceful sweep,

      Eddying,