To Mountain Tarn 



descending stones, unsettling others by the way, 

 and the sullen plunge of the gathered avalanche. 



A spell is on those mountain tarns, riven- 

 shored, misty, inscrutable, and the fauna which 

 scream around the hill summit and swim in the 

 still, pure depths. Wilder is the pipe of the wader 

 pattering round the glittering shores ; stranger 

 the beat of the wild duck's wing, which pitches 

 down on the surface. A witchery grimmer than 

 that of lowland lake is theirs. 



Stranger is this, say, after the first touch of 

 winter ; though seen of few save the shepherd, 

 or the shooter, who would have a mountain bird 

 in its winter plumage. The tail stream brawls 

 darker between its snow-sprinkled banks, and the 

 tarn lies chiller under the white summits. The 

 eagle hangs in the still frosty air over the white 

 ptarmigan, and the dark fox outwits the white 

 hare amid the white snow beneath. While grouse 

 scratch down to the heather tips at once to feed 

 and to hide. 



The search for the symbol of a presence, the 

 fleeting outline of a form visible to the higher 

 sense, is hard as that for "The Holy Grail." 

 Where our fathers saw visions are none. What 

 was once around the homestead is no longer there. 

 The erst sweet lanes are as an empty house. 

 Without pause, save to glance where the network 

 of shadows imprison the sunbeams, or the mist 

 of blue hyacinth shines in the undergrowth, we 



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