Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Scotland: Vols. VI–VIII. 1876–79.
Blaavin
By Alexander Smith (1830–1867)O
How oft since our parting hour
You have roared with the wintry torrents,
You have gloomed through the thunder-shower!
But by this time the lichens are creeping
Gray-green o’er your rocks and your stones,
And each hot afternoon is steeping
Your bulk in its sultriest bronze.
O, sweet is the spring wind, Blaavin,
When it loosens your torrents’ flow,
When with one little touch of a sunny hand
It unclasps your cloak of snow.
O, sweet is the spring wind, Blaavin,
And sweet it was to me!
For before the bell of the snowdrop
Or the pink of the apple-tree,
Long before your first spring torrent
Came down with a flash and a whirl,
In the breast of its happy mother
There nestled my little girl.
O Blaavin, rocky Blaavin,
It was with the strangest start
That I felt, at the little querulous cry,
The new pulse awake in my heart;
A pulse that will live and beat, Blaavin,
Till, standing round my bed,
While the chirrup of birds is heard out in the dawn,
The watchers whisper, He ’s dead!
O, another heart is mine, Blaavin,
Sin’ this time seven year,
For life is brighter by a charm,
Death darker by a fear.
O Blaavin, rocky Blaavin,
How I long to be with you again,
To see lashed gulf and gully
Smoke white in the windy rain,—
To see in the scarlet sunrise
The mist-wreaths perish with heat,
The wet rock slide with a trickling gleam
Right down to the cataract’s feet;
While towards the crimson islands,
Where the sea-birds flutter and skirl,
A cormorant flaps o’er a sleek ocean floor
Of tremulous mother-of-pearl.
The winding hill-road mute and slow,
Each rock and rill are to my heart
So conscious of the long-ago.
My passion with its fulness ached,
I filled this region with my love,
Ye listened to me, barrier crags,
Thou heard’st me singing, blue above.
O, never can I know again
The sweetness of that happy dream,
But thou remember’st, iron crag,
And thou remember’st, falling stream!
O, look not so on me, ye rocks.
The past is past, and let it be;
Thy music, ever-falling stream,
Brings more of pain than joy to me.
O cloud, high dozing on the peak,
O tarn, that gleams so far below,
O distant ocean, blue and sleek,
On which the white sails come and go,
Ye look the same; thou sound’st the same,
Thou ever-falling, falling stream,—
Ye are the changeless dial-face
And I the passing beam.
As adown the long glen I hurried,
With the torrent from fall to fall,
The invisible spirit of Blaavin
Seemed ever on me to call.
As I passed the red lake fringed with rushes
A duck burst away from its breast,
And before the bright circles and wrinkles
Had subsided again into rest,
At a clear open turn of the roadway
My passion went up in a cry,
For the wonderful mountain of Blaavin
Was bearing his huge bulk on high,
Each precipice keen and purple
Against the yellow sky.