118 SCOTLAND ILLUSTRATED. 



Bridge, where it opens on the Register House. Here all its striking features 

 burst on the spectator at once, and in such number and combination as to 

 arrest the most careless observer. The monuments to Professors Stewart and 



Here learnt at the shrine of devotion to bow, 

 And numbered each bead with a tear and a vow — 

 A tear for the past, and a vow to begin 

 The life that partakes not of sorrow and sin. 



Though lost in the vortex of time's fatal tide — 

 Unknown, unrecorded its beadsmen have died; 

 Yet oft from the region of spirits they come 

 To visit the shrines of their desolate home ! 

 The mariner, steering )iis timorous bark 

 O'er the wave on its border, bewildered and dark, 

 Beholds the blue tapers that gleam from the pile, 

 And the tall hooded friars that chaunt in its aisle ! 

 He listens — he looks — and by terror unmanned 

 Shrinks back in his shallop, and strains to the land ! 



Now lucid— -now lost in Cimmerian shroud, 



Lo, the Pentlands, whose crest seems to pillar the cloud ! 



How sweet are the slopes that embellish the chain — 



Here waving in woodlands, or teeming with grain ; 



A thousand fair dwellings give life to the scene. 



As they glance on the eye from their arbours of green ; 



Where the glimpse of the sunbeam enlivens the rill 



As it fades on the westermost verge of the hill. 



And folds of light vapour invading the blue. 



Involve the perspective, and sober the view! 



Around me, where Salisbury closes the chain. 



And Arthur's proud summit o'ershadows the plain, 



A city expands ; where each object is rife 



With a thousand details from the dramas of life ! — 



There, turret and cupola crowd on the eye. 



And fortress and temple seem traced on the sky ! 



The mountains their bulwark — their mirror the sea — 



And fair as a land of enchantment may be ! 



Say, stranger, what clime of the south liast thou seen 



So meet for a poet — a painter — a queen ! 



But the curtain of twilight o'ershadows the shore. 

 And deepens the tint on the blue Lammerraoor; 

 The tints on Corstorphine have paled in their fire. 

 But sunset still lingers with gold on its spire ; 

 The Roseberry forests are hooded in grey. 

 And Night, like his heir, treads impatient on Day. — 

 And now, gentle stranger, if such be thy mood, 

 Go, welcome the moonlight in sweet Holy- Rood ! . . . 



