Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Scotland: Vols. VI–VIII. 1876–79.
Song of Ben Cruachan
By John Stuart Blackie (18091895)B
That gird in the lovely Loch Awe;
Loch Ettive is fed from his fountains,
By the streams of the dark-rushing Awe.
With his peak so high
He cleaves the sky
That smiles on his old gray crown,
While the mantle green,
On his shoulders seen,
In many a fold flows down.
A greeting to Nevis Ben;
And Nevis, in white snowy splendors,
Gives Cruachan greeting again.
O’er dread Glencoe
The greeting doth go,
And where Ettive winds fair in the glen;
And he hears the call
In his steep north wall,
“God bless thee, old Cruachan Ben.”
And ruin rides high on the storm,
All calm, in the midst of their bluster,
He stands with his forehead enorm.
When block on block,
With thundering shock,
Comes hurtled confusedly down,
No whit recks he,
But laughs to shake free
The dust from his old gray crown.
Down his sides with a wild, savage glee,
And when louder the loud Awe is roaring,
And the soft lake swells to a sea,
He smiles through the storm,
And his heart grows warm
As he thinks how his streams feed the plains,
And the brave old Ben
Grows young again,
And swells with his lusty veins.
That gird in the lovely Loch Awe;
Loch Ettive is fed from his fountains,
By the streams of the dark-rushing Awe.
Ere Adam was made
He reared his head
Sublime o’er the green winding glen;
And when flame wraps the sphere,
O’er earth’s ashes shall peer
The peak of the old granite Ben.