Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Scotland: Vols. VI–VIII. 1876–79.
Glencoe
By William Leighton (1841–1869)M
Crag o’er crag, and steep o’er steep;
Rugged scenes, the heart surprising
With an awe profound and deep;
Mountain streamlets gliding onward
With a swift unceasing flow,—
Rushing, pouring, hurrying downward
To the rivulet below,
Which in mellow music surges
All its rocky channels through;
And along the mountain gorges
Frequent peeps of heavenly blue.
All around the waving heather,
And the rocks so stern and brown;
Somewhere from the far-off ether
Dulcet lark-notes dropping down:
On yon crag a raven perching;
And a mist-cloud, wave on wave,
Brooding like some ghostly arching
O’er the mouth of Ossian’s cave.
And I sit and watch the gushing
Of the little rivulet,
With its crystal waters rushing
On in ceaseless foam and fret;
Beetling crags o’erhanging lonely
Caverns wrapt in thunder-gloom,
Where the mountain-eagle only
In their shadow finds a home;
Rocks upraised like stately columns;
Passes where the wild wind plays;—
I can read them all like volumes
Filled with tales of vanished days.
And a breeze steals down the hill,
Sending all at once a chill
Through the frame, and I remember
I am sitting in Glencoe,—
With its scenery enchanting,
With its crags and streamlets haunting,—
And my fancy wanders back
To that morning long ago,
When, across the frozen snow,
Echoed o’er the mountains black
Warriors’ curses uttered plainly,
Women’s voices pleading vainly,
Yells and shouts and frantic crying,
Clanging shocks of angry steel,
And, dealt above the dead and dying,
Blows which strong arms only deal!
Slumberous peace and awful silence
Brood above this valley now,
As if never sounds of violence
Thrilled its echoing gorges through;
Gone the clang of warfare glorious!
Hushed the pibroch in the glen!
Perished all the wild uproarious
Noise and tramp of arméd men!
Desolation without measure!
No sweet homestead here and there;
No fair cottage with its azure
Smoke-wreath rising through the air!
No home sounds to follow after
Wild goat’s bleat or eaglet’s wail,—
Childhood’s voice or girlish laughter
Echoing through the quiet vale!
In one spot the ruins only
Of the homes of murdered men,
Make the loneliness more lonely,
Add a weirdness to the glen:
And vague thoughts of awful mystery
Overwhelm me like a blast,
Blowing from the page of History
All the horrors of the Past,—
As I view the phantoms flitting
From their graves of long ago,
And remember I am sitting
In the valley of Glencoe.