Yet her form, so full of grace,
She keeps hiding in a place,
Where the green glen shows no trace
Of a falling off;
But she’s so healthy, and so clean—
So chaste where’er she’s seen—
Should you kiss her lips, I ween
’Twould not cause you shame.
Greatly prized is she, I know,
By the stag with crested brow,
Whose thundering hoofs around him throw
Such a saucy sound;
When with him she meets the view
Red and yellow in her hue,
And of virtues not a few
That belong to her,
Then too is she free of fear,
And in speed without a peer,
And the primest ear to hear
In all Europe’s hers.
Oh! how sweetly they embrace,
Young and fawning,
When they gather to their place
In the gloaming;
There, till silent night is by,
Never terror comes them nigh,
While beneath the bush they lie—
Their known haunt of old.
Let the wild herd seek their bed,
Let them slumber, free of dread,
Where yon mighty moor is spread,
Broad and brawly;
Where, with joy, I’ve often spied
The sun colour their red hide,
As they wandered in their pride
O’er Ben Dorain.
The Hill-Water.
From the rim it trickles down
Of the mountain’s granite crown
Clear and cool;
Keen and eager though it go
Through your veins with lively flow,
Yet it knoweth not to reign
In the chambers of the brain
With misrule;
Where dark water-cresses grow
You will trace its quiet flow,
With mossy border yellow,
So mild, and soft, and mellow,
In its pouring.
With no shiny dregs to trouble
The brightness of its bubble
As it threads its silver way
From the granite shoulders grey
Of Ben Dorain.
Then down the sloping side
It will slip with glassy slide
Gently welling,
Till it gather strength to leap,
With a light and foamy sweep,
To the corrie broad and deep
Proudly swelling;
Then bends amid the boulders,
’Neath the shadow of the shoulders
Of the Ben,
Through a country rough and shaggy,
So jaggy and so knaggy,
Full of hummocks and of hunches,
Full of stumps and tufts and bunches,
Full of bushes and of rushes,
In the glen,