"I continued shepherd at Deloraine two years, and then went in the same capacity to the late Mr Knox of Todrigg; and if at the former place I had been well and happy, here I was still more so. His son William, the poet of 'The Lonely Hearth,' paid me much friendly attention. He commended my verses, and augured my success as one of the song-writers of my native land. In those days, I did not write with the most remote view to publication. My aim did not extend beyond the gratification of hearing my mountain strains sung by lad or lass, as time and place might favour. And when, in the dewy gloaming of a summer eve, returning home from the hill, and 'the kye were in the loan,' I did hear this much, I thought, no doubt, that
"'The swell and fall of these wild tones
Were worth the pomp of a thousand thrones.'
"William Crozier, author of 'The Cottage Muse,' was also my neighbour and friend at Todrigg, during the summer part of the year; and even at this hour I feel delight in recalling to memory the happy harmony of thought and feeling that blended with and enhanced the genial sunshine of those departed days. I rejoice to dwell upon those remote and rarely-trodden pastoral solitudes, among which my lot in the early years of life was so continually cast; few may well conceive how distinctly I can recall them. Memory, which seems often to constitute the mind itself, more, perhaps, than any other faculty, can set them so brightly before me, as if they were painted on a dark midnight sky with brushes dipped in the essence of living light. To appreciate thoroughly the grandeur of the mountain solitudes, it is necessary to have dwelt among the scenes, and to have looked upon them at every season of the ever-changing year. They are fresh with solemn beauty, when bathed in the deep dews of a summer morning; or in autumn, if you have attained to the border of the mystery which has overhung your path, and therefore to a station high enough for the survey, all that meets the eye shall be as a dream of poetry itself. The deep folds of white vapour fill up glen and hollow, till the summit of the mountains, near and far away—far as sight itself can penetrate—are only seen tinged with the early radiance of the sun, the whole so combined as to appear a limitless plain of variegated marble, peaceful as heaven, and solemnly serene as eternity. What Winter writes with his frozen finger I need not state. When the venerable old man, Gladstanes, perished among the stormy blasts of these wilds, I was one of about threescore of men who for three days traversed them in search of the dead. Then was the scenery of the mountains impressive, much beyond what can well be spoken. The bridal that loses the bride through some wayward freak of the fair may be sad enough; so also the train, in its dark array, that conveys the familiar friend to the chamber where the light of nature cannot come. But in this latter case, the hearts that still beat, necessarily know that their part is resignation, and suspense and anxiety mingle not in the mood of the living, as it relates to the dead; but otherwise is it with those who seem already constituting the funeral train of one who should have been—yet who is not there to be buried.
"'The feeling is nameless that makes us unglad,
And a strange, wild dismayment it brings;
Which yet hath no match in the solemn and sad
Desolation of men and of things.
* * * * *
"'The hill-foxes howl'd round the wanderer's way,
When his aim and his pathway were lost;
And effort has then oft too much of dismay
To pay well the toil it may cost.
If fate has its privilege, death has its power,
And is fearful where'er it may fall,
But worse it may seem 'mong the blasts of the moor,
Where all that approaches portends to devour,
Nor fixes till first it appal.
"'No mercy obtains in the tempests that rave,
By the sky-frozen elements fed,
And there comes no hand that is willing to save,
And soothe, till the spirit be fled;
But the storms round the thrones of the wilderness break
O'er the frail in the solitude cast,
And howl in their strength and impatience to take
Their course to commix with the roar of the lake
Where it flings forth its foam on the blast.
"'Lo! 'neath where the heath hangs so dark o'er yon peak,
Another of Adam lay lone,
Where the bield could not shelter the weary and weak,
By the strife of the tempest o'erthrown.
No raven had fed, and the hill-fox had fled,
If there he had yet come abroad,
And the stillness reign'd deep o'er his cold moorland bed,
Which came down in the power of the sleep of the dead
When the spirit return'd to its God.'
* * * * *
These are a few out of many more lines written on this subject, which at the time was so deeply interesting to mind and heart."