Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Scotland: Vols. VI–VIII. 1876–79.
Hawthornden
By Lydia Huntley Sigourney (17911865)T
To strike the traveller’s eye,
Clear-bosomed lakes, and leaping streams,
And mountains bleak and high;
Yet when he seeks his native clime
And ingle-side again,
’T would be a pity, had he missed
To visit Hawthornden.
The rocks abruptly go,
While through their deep and narrow gorge
Foams on the Esk below;
Yet though it plunges strong and bold,
Its murmurs meet the ear,
Like fretful childhood’s weak complaint,
Half smothered in its fear.
Of cave and wild cascade,
And all my early years were spent
In such romantic glade;
And I could featly climb the cliff,
Or forest roam and fen;
But I ’ve been puzzled here among
These rocks of Hawthornden.
To caverns dark and low,
Wherein, they say, King Robert Bruce
Found refuge from his foe;
And still amid their relics old
His stalwart sword they keep,
Which telleth tales of cloven heads
And gashes dire and deep;
Full many a niche they show,
Where erst his library he stored
(The guide-boy told us so).
Slight need had he of books, I trow,
Mid hordes of savage men,
And precious little time to read
At leaguered Hawthornden.
In old disastrous times,
The Covenanters’ nightly hymn
Upraised its startling chimes;
Here too they stoutly stood at bay,
Or frowning sped along,
To meet the high-born cavalier
In conflict fierce and strong.
Where Drummond, not in vain,
Awaited his inspiring muse,
And wooed her dulcet strain.
And there ’s the oak, beneath whose shade
He welcomed tuneful Ben,
And still the memory of their words
Is nursed in Hawthornden.