XII.

     Boon nature scattered, free and wild,
     Each plant or flower, the mountain's child.
     Here eglantine embalmed the air,
     Hawthorn and hazel mingled there;
     The primrose pale and violet flower
     Found in each cliff a narrow bower;
     Foxglove and nightshade, side by side,
     Emblems of punishment and pride,
     Grouped their dark hues with every stain
     The weather-beaten crags retain.
     With boughs that quaked at every breath,
     Gray birch and aspen wept beneath;
     Aloft, the ash and warrior oak
     Cast anchor in the rifted rock;
     And, higher yet, the pine-tree hung
     His shattered trunk, and frequent flung,
     Where seemed the cliffs to meet on high,
     His boughs athwart the narrowed sky.
     Highest of all, where white peaks glanced,
     Where glistening streamers waved and danced,
     The wanderer's eye could barely view
     The summer heaven's delicious blue;
     So wondrous wild, the whole might seem
     The scenery of a fairy dream.

     XIII.

     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 strayed,
     Still broader sweep its channels made.
     The shaggy mounds no longer stood,
     Emerging from entangled wood,
     But, wave-encircled, seemed 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.

     XIV.

     And now, to issue from the glen,
     No pathway meets the wanderer's ken,
     Unless he climb with footing nice
     A far-projecting precipice.
     The broom's 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 burnished sheet of living gold,
     Loch Katrine lay beneath him rolled,
     In all her length far winding lay,
     With promontory, creek, and bay,
     And islands that, empurpled bright,
     Floated amid the livelier light,
     And mountains that like giants stand
     To sentinel enchanted land.
     High on the south, huge Benvenue
     Down to the lake in masses threw
     Crags, knolls, and mounds, confusedly hurled,
     The fragments of an earlier world;
     A wildering forest feathered o'er
     His ruined sides and summit hoar,
     While on the north, through middle air,
     Ben-an heaved high his forehead bare.