Let me try my hand. No—no—no—I can see and feel, have an eye and a heart for Scenery, as it is called, but am no hand at a description. My dear, sweet, soft-breasted, fair-fronted, bright-headed, delightful Cruachan—thy very name, how liquid with open vowels—not a consonant among them all—no Man-Mountain Thou—Thou art the Lady of the Lake. I am in love with Thee—Thou must not think of retiring from the earth—Thou must not take the veil—off with it—off with it from those glorious shoulders—and come, in all Thy loveliness, to my long—my longing arms!
SEWARD.
Is that the singing of larks?
NORTH.
No larks live here. The laverock is a Lowland bird, and loves our brairded fields and our pastoral braes; but the Highland mountains are not for him—he knows by instinct that they are haunted—though he never saw the shadow nor heard the sugh of the eagle's wing.
SEWARD.
The singing from the woods seems to reach the sky. They have utterly forgotten their fear; or think you, sir, that birds know that what frightened them is gone, and that they sing with intenser joy because of the fear that kept them mute?
NORTH.
The lambs are frisking—and the sheep staring placidly at the Tents. I hear the hum of bees—returned—and returning from their straw-built Citadels. In the primal hour of his winged life, that wavering butterfly goes by in search of the sunshine that meets him; and happy for this generation of ephemerals that they first took wing on the afternoon of the day of the Great Storm.
BULLER.