Though field be bare, and forest brown,
And winter rule the waning year--
Unmoved I see each charm decay,
Unmourn'd the sweets of autumn die;
And fading flower and leafless spray
Court all in vain the thoughtful sigh.

Not that dull grief delights to see
Vex'd Nature wear a kindred gloom;
Not that she smiled in vain to me,
When gaily prank'd in summer's bloom
Nay, much I loved, at even-tide,
Through Brahan's lonely woods to stray.
To mark thy peaceful billows glide,
And watch the sun's declining ray.

But yet, though roll'd thy billows fair
As e'er roll'd those of classic stream--
Though green thy woods, now dark and bare,
Bask'd beauteous in the western beam;
To mark a scene that childhood loved,
The anxious eye was turned in vain;
Nor could I find the friend approved,
That shared my joy or soothed my pain.

Now winter reigns: these hills no more
Shall sternly bound my anxious view
Soon, bent my course to Croma's shore,
Shall I yon winding path pursue.
Fairer than _here_ gay summer's glow
To me _there_ wintry storms shall seem
Then blow, ye bitter breezes, blow,
And lash the Conon's mountain stream.

CHAPTER XI.

"The bounding pulse, the languid limb
The changing spirit's rise and fall--
We know that these were felt by him,
For these are felt by all."--MONTGOMERY.

The apprenticeship of my friend William Ross had expired during the
working season of this year, when I was engaged at Conon-side; and he
was now living in his mother's cottage in the parish of Nigg, on the
Ross-shire side of the Cromarty Firth. And so, with the sea between us,
we could no longer meet every evening as before, or take long
night-walks among the woods. I crossed the Firth, however, and spent one
happy day in his society, in a little, low-roofed domicile, with a
furze-roughened ravine on the one side, and a dark fir-wood on the
other; and which, though picturesque and interesting as a cottage, must,
I fear, have been a very uncomfortable home. His father, whom I had not
before seen, was sitting beside the fire as I entered. In all except
expression he was wonderfully like my friend; and yet he was one of the
most vapid men I ever knew--a man literally without an idea, and almost
without a recollection or a fact. And my friend's mother, though she
showed