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Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Scotland: Vols. VI–VIII. 1876–79.

Dunoon

Dunoon

By Thomas Lyle (1792–1859)

SEE the glow-worm lits her fairy lamp

From a beam of the rising moon,

On the heathy shore at evening fall,

’Twixt Holy-Loch and dark Dunoon;

Her fairy lamp’s pale silvery glare,

From the dew-clad moorland flower,

Invites my wandering footsteps there,

At the lonely twilight hour.

When the distant beacon’s revolving light

Bids my lone steps seek the shore,

There the rush of the flow-tide’s rippling wave

Meets the dash of the fisher’s oar;

And the dim-seen steamboat’s hollow sound,

As she seaward tracks her way;

All else are asleep in the still calm night,

And robed in the misty gray.

When the glow-worm lits her elfin lamp,

And the night breeze sweeps the hill,

It ’s sweet, on thy rock-bound shores, Dunoon,

To wander at fancy’s will.

Eliza! with thee, in this solitude,

Life’s cares would pass away,

Like the fleecy clouds over gray Kilmun,

At the wake of early day.