The lust of gold hath ruined thee, the lust that ruined Rome!"

Thus spake the aged Highlandman, with bitter grief; and then,

With sober pace he wound his way, down the clearwatered glen.

As when a storm hath cleared the air with thunderous

gusty war,

More calm of soul he slept that night, at Castleton of

Braemar.

ARRAN.

GLEN ROSA.

To lone Glen Rosa's rocky dell,

'Neath the sheer side of high Goat-fell, Where pinnacled cliffs of granite grey, Huge-piled in savage quaint array,

Cut sharp the sky,

Come whoso shuns the ways of men,

And let him try,

If in this waste and houseless glen,

A temple made for solitude,

There live some charm to touch his mood,

That hungering cries for something good,

To heal his sorrow!

Come thou, who, whirling round and round
In social eddies, dost confound

Through very men the man within thee;

The trick of thought if thou would'st win thee,

Come here, and borrow

From rock, and stream, and lonely dell, Green fern, and purple heather bell, What quiet power with them doth dwell, To heal thy sorrow!

Or art thou one of haughty soul,
Who, when the tide of life ran high,
Like a steed rushing from control,

Did'st mark, with dictatorial eye,

Some proud position,

And called it thine; but, ere the bark,

That was to thee salvation's ark,

Had reached its harbour, He, whose will

Sways every human chance and skill,

Smote thy ambition

With shipwreck.

Prostrate now thou liest,

The hunter late of lofty game,

As one, to whom lowest and highest

Of human fortunes is the same.

Come hither, haughty heart, and see

The thing that's brothered most to thee

In all creation—

That pyramid grey, the glen's north Guard,
Which with a million storms hath warred,

Whose shattered peak and front is scarred
With desolation.

There, if thou hast no kindlier food

Than pride, to nurse thy bitter mood,

Preach to thyself in solitude,

And be a man.

Though thy proud schemes be crushed to dust,

Like the old granite's crumbled crust,

Hold to this plan,

With the old mountains of the land,

To stand and bear, and bear and stand,

And be a man!

But, if not wholly thou art hard,

Nor to each gracious inlet barred

Of gentle feeling,

Attend; amid this savage grandeur,

There breathes a spirit not untender,

With balmy healing

Fraught to the chastened soul. Behold

These giant-slabs of granite old,

That mail the mountain's shelvy side;

Even in their chinks the delicate pride
Blooms of the starry Saxifrage.

So rich is God. From age to age

He in the least things and the lowest,

Which scarce thine eye notes where thou goest,

His power displays;

Not more in noon-day glory bright,

Than in the worm, that shines by night

With living rays.

This Goat-fell, king of Arran's hills,

Though harsh he show, and hard, like thee,

That scarce a stunted rowan tree

Fringes his skirt ;—not the less he

Is parent of a thousand rills,

That, from his deep cells trickling free,
Through beds of swelling verdure ooze,
As soft and kind as summer dews,

When softest falling.

Or look thou there, where, leaping wild

From rock to rock the mountain-child

With boisterous brawling,

Swells to a river-wandering there