Sweet are the paths, O passing sweet!
By Esk's fair streams that run
O'er airy steep through copsewood deep
Impervious to the sun.
There the rapt poet's step may rove,
And yield the muse the day;
There Beauty, led by timid Love
May shun the telltale ray.
No afternoon stroll could be more delightful than one through the valley of the Esk as far as Roslin. Many go to Roslin by coach from Edinburgh, but they fail to see the glen. Guided by a Scottish friend, we found that the better way is to go to Hawthornden and walk through the gardens and grounds of the ancient castle where the poet Drummond lived and wrote to his heart's content of the beauties of the scene. Here we saw the caves, cut out of the solid rock beneath the castle, which sheltered Robert Bruce during the troublous times when Fortune seemed to frown. Here, too, we stood under the sycamore tree where Drummond welcomed Ben Jonson to his home. Descending the path to the river, we crossed by a little wooden bridge, with a gate in the middle, which can be opened only from the Hawthornden side. Then a walk, which was half scramble, brought us finally to Roslin Castle, on a rock peeping over the foliage, high above the river. Both Roslin and Hawthornden are mentioned in 'The Lay of the Last Minstrel' in the ballad of the lovely Rosabelle:—
O'er Roslin all that dreary night
A wondrous blaze was seen to gleam;
'T was broader than the watch-fire light,
And redder than the bright moonbeam.
It glared on Roslin's castled rock,
It ruddied all the copsewood glen;
'T was seen from Dreyden's groves of oak,
And seen from caverned Hawthornden.
LASSWADE COTTAGE