XXI.
Now wound the path its dizzy ledge
Around a precipice’s edge,
When lo! a wasted female form,
Blighted by wrath of sun and storm,
In tatter’d weeds[260] and wild array,
Stood on a cliff beside the way,
And glancing round her restless eye,
Upon the wood, the rock, the sky,
Seem’d naught to mark, yet all to spy.
Her brow was wreath’d with gaudy broom;
With gesture wild she waved a plume
Of feathers, which the eagles fling
To crag and cliff from dusky wing;
Such spoils her desperate step had sought,
Where scarce was footing for the goat.
The tartan plaid she first descried,
And shriek’d till all the rocks replied;
As loud she laugh’d when near they drew,
For then the Lowland garb she knew;
And then her hands she wildly wrung,
And then she wept, and then she sung—
She sung!—the voice, in better time,
Perchance to harp or lute might chime;
And now, though strain’d and roughen’d, still
Rung wildly sweet to dale and hill.