uds that lean upon the braes
Encompassing Loch Awe, the watery plain
Is pricked with million lances of the rain.

XVI.

KINLOCHEWE.

The mist, retreating, gems the leaves with dew,
Soft blows the breeze along the fragrant meads,
A little brawling burn runs through the reeds
And ripples away under the cloudless blue.
I never saw the world so fair to view,
For Spring has riven old Winter's funeral weeds
And given new sap and vigour to the seeds
That lay inanimate the cold months through.
Old man! with jaded limbs and wrinkled brow,
That walkest feebly in this lenient sun
Like a day-dream, thy life is winter now.
But life and death in ceaseless cycles run,
And tireless Time and Heaven have in store
For thee a myriad resurrections more.

XVII.

GENERAL WADE.

Houses are fewer here than milestones are:
We stand a thousand feet aloft in air
Upon a bouldered hillside stern and bare,
Down which the roadway serpentines afar.
There are no clouds in the wide blue to mar
The passage of the sun's imperial glare
Over a dreary-stretching landscape, where
Rough winds hold riot all the calendar.
Who that has footed o'er these firm-knit paths
But lauds the men whose strenuous axe and spade
Drove roads through the wild glens and hilly straths
Under the generalship of tireless Wade!
On the safe tracks behind them, commerce came
The unruly spirit of the Celt to tame.

XVIII.

THE SOUND OF RAASAY IN DECEMBER.

A snowy gust is whirling down the strait,
Raasay is gleaming ghostly to the sight,
And, robed in lawn, from sea to topmost height
Skye and her lordly mountains stand in state.
Ever from heaven falls the silent weight
Of wavering flakes that dim the stars of night.
Our gallant little boat with all the might
Of the wild-hissing surges holds debate,
Plunging and struggling, till at last we see
A spacious haven, sudden and serene
And, high aloft, the twinkle of Portree.
At once the winds are hushed, the moon is seen
To free her face from cloudy drift, and fill
With silver light the clefts of Essie Hill.

XIX.

LES NEIGES D'ANTAN.

I.

Where is Macfee, that valiant preacher,
Gifted with voice, so harsh and loud,
Aye, louder and harsher than any screecher
Of birds that sail on the black storm-cloud?
An