Part 6 (1/2)
”The muse, nae poet ever fand her, Till by himsel' he learned to wander Adown so: Oh, sweet to !”--BURNS
There are delightful walks in the iaged, as I have said, on day's wages--i as the hour of six arrived, I had, during the su, in which to enjoy thereat hollow occupied by the waters of the Cromarty Firth divides into two valleys at its upper end, just where the sea ceases to flow There is the valley of the Peffer, and the valley of the Conon; and a tract of broken hills lies between, forlolomerate, always a picturesque deposit, terher up the valley, in a range of rough precipices, as bold and abrupt, though they front the interior of the country, as if they formed the ter pines crest their summits; and the noble woods of Brahan Castle, the ancient seat of the Earls of Seaforth, sweep doards froin of the Conon On our own side of the river, the more immature but fresh and thickly-clustered woods of Conon House rose along the banks; and I was delighted to find around, occupying, in a profoundly solitary corner, a little green hillock, once an island of the river, but now left dry by the gradual wear of the channel, and the consequent fall of the water to a lower level A few broken walls rose on the highest peak of the eminence; the slope was occupied by the little mossy hillocks and sorely lichened to the tombs immediately beside the ruin there stood a rustic dial, with its iron gnoreen eather-stains andwood, thick as a hedge, but just open enough towards the west to ad the to sun
I greatly enjoyed those evening walks From Conon-side as a centre, a radius of six miles commands many objects of interest; Strathpeffer, with itsthe rest, one of the largest Spanish chestnuts in Scotland--Knockferrel, with its vitrified fort--the old tower of Fairburn--the old though somewhat modernized tower of Kinkell--the Brahan policies, with the old Castle of the Seaforths--the old Castle of Kilcoy--and the Druidic circles of the moor of Redcastle In succession I visited them all, with many a sweet scene besides; but I found that my four hours, when the visit involved, as it soh time to exahty boon to the working man who has acquired a taste for the quiet pleasures of intellect, and either cultivates an affection for natural objects, or, according to the antiquary, ”loves to look upon what is old” My recollections of this rich tract of country, with its woods, and towers, and noble river, seeeous sunsets Its uneven plain of Old Red Sandstone leans, at a few neiss, that, at the line where they join on to the green Lowlands, are low and taion, where the old Scandinavian flora of the country--that flora which alone flourished in the tiainst the Gerrounds, as the Celt of old used to ainst the Saxon And at the top of a swelling ed and black, stands the pale tall tower of Fairburn, that, seen in the gloahastly spectre of the past, looking froes of the present The freebooter, its founder, had at first built it, for greater security, without a door, and used to clih theof an upper story by a ladder But now unbroken peace brooded over its shattered ivy-bound walls, and ploughed fields crept up year by year along the reen, and the dark heath disappeared There is a poetic age in the life of most individuals, as certainly as in the history of e it is
I had now fully entered on it; and enjoyed in h to co hour of toil, and many a privation I have quoted, as the motto of this chapter, an exquisite verse from Burns There is scarce another stanza in the wide round of British literature that so faithfully describes thecame, and after I had buried myself in the thick woods, or reached so over hly in keeping with the scene and hour as the still woodland pool beside me, whose surface reflected in the calm every tree and rock that rose around it, and every hue of the heavens above And yet the h sweet, was also, as the poet expresses it, a pensive one: it was steeped in the happyso truthfully by an elder bard, who also oe s foreknowne-- When I builde castles in the air, Voide of sorrow and voide of care, Pleasing myself with phantasms sweet-- Methinks the time runs very fleet; All my joyes to this are follie;-- None soe sweet as melanchollie
”When to uile, By a brook side or wood soe green, Unheard, unsought for, or unseen, A thousand pleasures doe me blesse, And crowne my soul with happiness All my joyes to this are follie;-- None soe sweet as melanchollie”
When I remember how my happiness was enhanced by every little bird that burst out into sudden song a the trees, and then as suddenly beca through the topaz-coloured depths of the water, or rose for a moment over its calm surface--how the blue sheets of hyacinths that carpeted the openings in the wood delighted leaht flush on the river, seemed to infor over the scraps of verse produced at the time, to find how little of the sentiment in which I so luxuriated, or of the nature which I so enjoyed, found their way into them But what Wordsworth well teriven to but few, is as distinct from the poetic faculty vouchsafed toexquisiteit Nay, there are cases in which the ”faculty” h, and yet the ”acco I have been told by the late Dr Chalmers, whose Astronomical Discourses fore, that he never succeeded in achieving a readable stanza; and Dr Thoh he produced whole volu of himself But, like the Metaphysician, ould scarce have published his verses unless he had thought theood ones, my rhymes pleased me at this period, and for some time after, wonderfully well: they came to be so associated in my mind with the scenery amid which they were co, that though they neither breathed the ested both; on the principle, I suppose, that a pewter spoon, bearing the London staested to a crew of poor weather-beaten sailors in one of the islands of the Pacific, their far-distant hoested at this ti to the reader The few sihts which it e the woods, beside the aged, lichen-incrusted dial-stone
ON SEEING A SUN-DIAL IN A CHURCHYARD
Grey dial-stone, I fain would know What rave, And rests the frequent bier
Ah! bootless creeps the dusky shade, Slow o'er thy figured plain: When mortal life has passed away, Time counts his hours in vain
As sweeps the clouds o'er ocean's breast, When shrieks the wintry wind
So doubtful thoughts, grey dial-stone, Co o'er my mind
I think of what could place thee here, Of those beneath thee laid, And ponder if thou wert not raised In e they fret
May mock his fellow-men!
In sooth, their soberest freaks afford Rare food for mockery then
But ah! when passed their brief sojourn-- When Heaven's dread doom is said-- Beats there the human heart could pour Like mockeries o'er the dead?
The fiend unblest, who still to harrace to hirace is o'er; But never sure could e or clime, Thus raise in mockery o'er the dead, The stone that measures time
Grey dial-stone, I fain would know What h, And drops the frequent tear
Like thy carved plain, grey dial-stone, Grief's weary mourners be: Dark sorrow metes out time to them-- Dark shade marks time on thee
I know it noert thou not placed To catch the eye of hiauds Worthless appear, and dim?
We think of time when time has fled, The friend our tears deplore; The God whom pride-swollen hearts deny, Grief-huht Passes untold away; Nor were it thine at noon to teach If failed the solar ray
In death's dark night, grey dial-stone, Cease all the works of men; In life, if Heaven withhold its aid, Bootless these works and vain
Grey dial-stone, while yet thy shade Points out those hours are mine-- While yet at early morn I rise-- And rest at day's decline-- Would that the SUN that forht rays beaht s--all the more happy from the circumstance that I was still in heart and appetite a boy, and could relish as much as ever, when their season came on, the wild raspberries of the Conon woods--a very abundant fruit in that part of the country--and cliuean-trees of their wild cherries When the river was low, I used to wade into its fords in quest of its pearl h not very successful into see how thickly the individuals of this greatest of British fresh-waterthe pebbles of the fords, or tothe bottohts, the current had soswept away--each on its large white foot, with its valves elevated over its back, like the carpace of some tall tortoise I found occasion at this time to conclude, that the _Unio_ of our river-fords secretes pearls so much more frequently than the _Unionidae_ and _Anadonta_ of our still pools and lakes, not from any specific peculiarity in the constitution of the creature, but from the effects of the habitat which it is its nature to choose It receives in the fords and shallows of a rapid river h blow from sticks and pebbles carried down in times of flood, and occasionally fro droughts; and the blows induce the morbid secretions of which pearls are the result There seenea_, with its beautiful silvery nacre--as bright often, and always aritiferus_--should not be equally productive of pearls; but, secure from violence in its still pools and lakes, and unexposed to the circumstances that provoke abnorle pearl for every hundred that are ripened into value and beauty by the exposed current-tossed _Unionidae_ of our rapidbore always in a creature of a greatly higher family similar results, and that the hard buffets dealt hih stream of life could be transmuted, by some blessed internal predisposition of his nature, into pearls of great price
It for enjoy behind the woods, in the deeper pools of the Conon--a pleasure which, like all thepleasures of youth, bordered on terror Like that of the poet, when he ”wantoned with the breakers,”
and the ”freshening seafear”
But it was not current nor freshening eddy that rendered it such: I had acquired, long before, a co out from the shores of the Bay of Cro the many boys of a seaport town, not more than one or tould venture to accoe is ever a credulous one, as certainly in individuals as in nations: the old fears of the supernatural may be modified and etherealized, but they continue to influence it; and at this period the Conon still took its place a the haunted streahlands that used, ere the erection of the stately bridge in our neighbourhood, to sport rapher in; and as Superstition has her figures as certainly as Poesy, the perils of a wildbetween thinly-inhabited banks, were personified in the beliefs of the people by a frightful goblin, that took ain its fords, the benighted traveller Its goblin, the ”water-wraith,” used to appear as a tall wouished chiefly by her withered, nant scowl I knew all the various fords--always dangerous ones--where of old she used to start, it was said, out of the river, before the terrified traveller, to point at hier, or to beckon hily on; and I was shown the very tree to which a poor Highlander had clung, when, in crossing the river by night, he was seized by the goblin, and froh assisted by a young lad, his coed into the middle of the current, where he perished And when, in swi at sunset over some dark pool, where the eye failed toof soainst me as I passed, I have felt, with sudden start, as if touched by the cold, bloodless fingers of the goblin