Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Scotland: Vols. VI–VIII. 1876–79.
Staffa
By William Sotheby (17571833)S
I passed beneath thy arch gigantic,
Whose pillared cavern swells the roar,
When thunders on thy rocky shore
The roll of the Atlantic.
The surge forgot its motion,
And every pillar in thy cave
Slept in its shadow on the wave,
Unrippled by the ocean.
When mid the lightning’s sweep,
Thy isle with its basaltic frame,
And every column wreathed with flame,
Burst from the boiling deep.
O’er sculptured graves I trod,
Where Time had strewn each mouldering aisle
O’er saints and kings that reared the pile,
I hailed the eternal God:
Yet, Staffa, more I felt his presence in thy cave
Than where Iona’s cross rose o’er the western wave.