An eagle with stretched wings, but beamless eye,-
An eagle that could neither wail nor soar.
Effigy of the vanished, (shall I dare

To call thee so?) or symbol of fierce deeds
And of the towering courage which past times
Rejoiced in, take, whate'er thou be, a share,
Not undeserved, of the memorial rhymes
That animate my way where'er it leads!

William Wordsworth.

Dunoon.

DUNOON.

NEE 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.

Thomas Lyle.

Dunsinane Castle.

DUNSINANE.

MACBETH. Hang out our banners! on the out

ward walls

The cry is still, They come ! Our Castle's strength Will laugh a siege to scorn; here let them lie,

Till famine and the ague eat them up.

Were they not 'forc'd with those that should be ours, We might have met them dareful, beard to beard, And beat them backward home. What is that noise?

A cry within, of women.

SEYTON. It is the cry of women, my good lord. MACB. I have almost forgot the taste of fears. The time has been, my senses would have quail'd

To hear a night-shriek; and my fell of hair
Would at a dismal treatise rouse, and stir

As life were in 't. I have supp'd full with horrors;
Direness, familiar to my slaught'rous thoughts,
Cannot once start me. Wherefore was that cry?
SEY. The Queen, my lord, is dead.

MACB. She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word.
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools.
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing. -

Enter a MESSENGER.

Thou com'st to use thy tongue; thy story quickly. MESS. Gracious my lord, I should report that which I saw, but know not how to do it.

MACB. Well, say, sir. MESS. As I did stand my watch upon the hill, I look'd toward Birnam, and anon, methought,

The wood began to move.

MACB.

Liar and slave!

MESS. Let me endure your wrath, if 't be not so; Within this three mile may you see it coming.

I say, a moving grove.

MACB.

If thou speak'st false,

Upon the next tree shalt thou hang alive,
Till famine cling thee; if thy speech be sooth,
I care not if thou dost for me as much. ·
I pull in resolution; and begin

To doubt the equivocation of the Fiend,
That lies like truth: Fear not, till Birnam-wood
Do come to Dunsinane; and now a wood
Comes toward Dunsinane. Arm, arm, and out!-
If this, which he avouches, does appear,
There is nor flying hence, nor tarrying here.
I 'gin to be a-weary of the sun,

And wish the estate o' the world were now undone. ·
Ring the alarum-bell; blow, wind! come wrack!

At least we 'll die with harness on our back.

William Shakespeare.

Dunstaffnage Castle.

BROKEN

DUNSTAFFNAGE CASTLE.

ROKEN Dunstaffnage by the western sea,
Thou art as dark as any old misdeed
Committed in thy lonely towers could be!
Thou 'rt like a life too gloomy to succeed,
That preys upon itself and dies of need.
Yet thou wert born in History's early dawn,
Of warlike race and brood, a stately thing
Created strong and fearless to adorn
The vales that wooed thee for thy sheltering.
To-day what valley of them all takes heed

Of thee? They smile and dance beneath the corn — E'en the great ocean flaunts thee with its scorn! Now hath a new-born babe more power than thou, For it hath life, thine perished long ago.

And yet, Dunstaffuage, I should do thee wrong,
Thou, who hast held great Scotland in amaze,
To image piteous these later days

And leave thy glorious memories unsung!
Within thee when the Christian world was young,
Twelve centuries ago, fame's minstrels sang,
Whispered thy name and victory's bugles rang!
Great kings anointed here with blast of song,
With trumpets blowing and with clash of spears
Knelt to the patriarch of their royal years,
The holy stone,' that Scone deprived thee of
When first men ceased to fear thee and to love!
Thou great Dunstaffnage, though we cannot save
Thy life, we may at least revere thy grave!

Cora Kennedy Aitken.

Earlsburn, the River.

SWEET EARLSBURN, BLITHE EARLSBURN.

WEET Earlsburn, blithe Earlsburn,
Mine own, my native stream,

My heart grows young again, while thus

1 Coronation-stone of the Kings of Scotland, taken from Iona to Dunstaffnage, thence to Scone, and last to Westminster Abbey, where it has been for six hundred years.