y rock's impending brow,
And on its windy summit take your stand--
Lo! Wilsill's lovely vale extends below,
And long, long heathy moors on either hand
Stretch dark and misty--a bleak tract of land,
Whereon but seldom human footsteps come;
Save when with dog, obedient at command,
And gun, the sportsman quits his city home,
And brushing through the ling in quest of game doth roam.

And lo! in wild confusion scattered round,
Huge, shapeless, naked, massy piles of stone
Rise, proudly towering o'er this barren ground,
Scowling in mutual hate--apart, alone,
Stern, desolate they stand--and seeming thrown
By some dire, dread convulsion of the earth
From her deep, silent caves, and hoary grown
With age and storms that Boreas issues forth
Replete with ire from his wild regions in the north.

How beautiful! yet wildly beautiful,
As group on group comes glim'ring on the eye,
Making the heart, soul, mind, and spirit full
Of holy rapture and sweet imagery;
Till o'er the lip escapes th' unconscious sigh,
And heaves the breast with feeling, too too deep
For words t' express the awful sympathy,
That like a dream doth o'er the senses creep,
Chaining the gazer's eye--and yet he cannot weep.

But stands entranced and rooted to the spot,
While grows the scene upon him vast, sublime,
Like some gigantic city's ruin, not
Inhabited by men, but Titans--Time
Here rests upon his scythe and fears to climb,
Spent by th' unceasing toil of ages past,
Musing he stands and listens to the chime
Of rock-born spirits howling in the blast,
While gloomily around night's sable shades are cast.

Well deemed I ween the Druid sage of old
In making this his dwelling place on high;
Where all that's huge and great from Nature's mould,
Spoke this the temple of his deity;
Whose walls and roof were the o'erhanging sky,
His altar th' unhewn rock, all bleak and bare,
Where superstition with red, phrensied eye
And look all wild, poured forth her idol prayer,
As rose the dying wail,[4] and blazed the pile in air.

Lost in the lapse of time, the Druid's lore
Hath ceased to echo these rude rocks among;
No altar new is stained with human gore;
No hoary bard now weaves the mystic song;
Nor thrust in wicker hurdles, throng on throng,
Whole multitudes are offered to appease
Some angry god, whose will and power of wrong
Vainly they thus essayed to soothe an