She followed, and passed beneath the quicken arch.
Sweet was the song of the merle, that was then no more; sweet the green shadow of the rowans, that now grew straight as young pines. Sweet the far song in the sky, where the white dove flew against the sun.
Bride looked, and her eyes were glad. Bonnie the blooming of the heather on the slopes of Dun-I. Iona lay green and gold, isled in her blue waters. From the sheiling of Dùvach, her father, rose a thin column of pale blue smoke. The collies, seeing her, barked loudly with welcoming joy.
The bleating of the sheep, the lowing of the kye, the breath of the salt wind from the open sea beyond, the song of the flowing tide in the Sound beneath: dear the homing.
With a strange light in her eyes she moved down through the heather and among the green bracken: white, wonderful, fair to see.
THE FISHER OF MEN
“But now I have grown nothing, being all,
And the whole world weighs down upon my heart.”