Culross. WHEN THE OLD SEAPORT. WHEN winds were wailing round me, Scowled from beneath the sullen clouds Of pale November's sky, In downcast meditation All silently I stood, Gazing the wintry ocean's Rough, bleak, and barren flood. A place more wild and lonely The caverned sea-rocks beetled o'er There was no sound from aught around, Save, mid the echoing caves, The plashing and the dashing Of the melancholy waves. High, mid the lowering waste of sky, The sea-weed's tangly arms; The face of Nature in a pall Death-shrouded seemed to be, As by St. Serf's lone tomb arose In twilight's shadowy scowling, Thy blackened piles had stood, Of hoar decrepitude all spake, Of fierce, wild times departed; Of quaint, grim vessels beating up Far on the foamy seas. It spake of swart gray-headed men, Who sailed with Barton or with Spens, And how, when windows rattled, And strong pines bowed to earth, Pale wives, with trembling children mute, Would cower beside the hearth, All sadly musing on the ships That, buffeting the breeze, Held but a fragile plank betwixt The sailor and the seas. - How welcome their return to home! And huts beneath the giant palms, Mid melancholy fancies My spirit loved to stray, Back through the mists of hooded Eld, Yes! through Tradition's twilight, To days had Fancy flown When Canmore or when Kenneth dree'd The Celt's uneasy crown; When men were bearded savages, An unenlightened horde, Mid which gleamed Cunning's scapulaire, And, in their rusty hauberks, Thronged past the plaided bands; And slanting lay the Norsemen's keels On ocean's dreary sands; And on the long flat moorlands, The cairn, with lichens gray, Marked where their souls shrieked forth in blood, On Battle's iron day. Between me and the sea loomed out The ivied Abbey old, In whose grim vaults the Bruces kneel And where, inurned, lies hid the heart Whose blood, by Belgium's Oster-Scheldt, Waned all these trancèd visions; But, on my eerie sight, Remained the old dim seaport David Macbeth Moir. Dalmeny. DOUN FAIR DALMENY'S ROSY DELLS. OUN fair Dalmeny's rosy dells DOUN Sweet Mary wandered, sad an' wae; The sunlicht faded owre the lea, An' cheerless fell the simmer day. The warblin' mavis sang nae mair, As aft she sighed, in heavy sorrow: "O, lanely, lanely lies my luve; An' cauld's the nicht that brings nae morrow! "By yonder hoary castle wa', Where murmurs deep the dark blue sea, I wearied sair the langsome nicht, Till tears bedimmed my sleepless ee. The boat gaed down by Cramond's isle, For lanely, lanely lies my luve; An' cauld's the nicht that brings nae morrow!" "O foaming waves, that took my luve, My ain true-luve, beyond compare! O, will I see his winsome form, An' hear his dear lo'ed voice nae mair ?" Fu' deep the snaw-white surges moaned: "O, sair 's the burden o' thy sorrow; For lanely, lanely lies thy luve; An' cauld's the nicht that brings nae morrow!" |