Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Scotland: Vols. VI–VIII. 1876–79.
Elegy Written in a Wood near Roslin Castle, 1762
By William Julius Mickle (17341788)T
The playful school-boy swanton o’er the green;
Where spreading poplars shade the cottage door,
The villagers in rustic joy convene.
With solemn meditation let me stray;
This is the hour when, to the wise and good,
The heavenly maid repays the toils of day.
Whispers the gently-waving boughs among;
The star of evening glimmers o’er the dale,
And leads the silent host of heaven along.
The silver empress of the night appears!
Yon limpid pool reflects a stream of light,
And faintly in its breast the woodland bears.
Solemn and constant, from yon dell resound;
The lonely hearths blaze o’er the distant glade;
The bat, low-wheeling, skims the dusky ground.
The Gothic abbey rears its sculptured towers;
Dull through the roofs resounds the whistling gale;
Dark solitude among the pillars lowers.
And, solemn, shade a chapel’s sad remains;
Where yon scathed poplar through the window waves,
And, twining round, the hoary arch sustains;
Who longs to follow, yet unknowing where,
Some hoary shepherd, o’er his staff reclined,
Pores on the graves, and sighs a broken prayer.
Surround yon craggy bank, the castle rears
Its crumbling turrets: still its towery head
A warlike mien, a sullen grandeur wears.
Still on the war-worn veteran’s brow attends;
Still his big bones his youthful prime declare,
Though, trembling, o’er the feeble crutch he bends.
Where oft the knights the beauteous dames have led;
Gone is the bower, the grot a ruined heap,
Where bays and ivy o’er the fragments spread.
Great in their bloody arms, marched o’er the lea,
Eying their rescued fields with proud delight;
Now lost to them! and, ah, how changed to me!