Afraid the frown of the saint to see, Who reared their temple amid the sea, This stranger of beauty and step so light The months and the days flew lightly bye, The monks were kind and the nuns were shy; But the gray-haired sires, in trembling mood, Kneel'd at the altar and kissed the rood. McKinnon he dreamed that the saint of the isle Stood by his side, and with courteous smile Bade him arise from his guilty sleep, And pay his respects to the God of the deep, In temple that north in the main appeared, Which fire from bowels of ocean had seared, Which the giant builders of heaven had reared, To rival in grandeur the stately pile Himself had upreared in Iona's isle; For round them rose the mountains of sand, And so high ran the waves of the angry sea, They had drizzled the cross on the top of Dun-ye. The cycle was closed, and the period run, He had vowed to the sea, he had vowed to the sun, Their homage to pay to the God of the main. Named all the monks should with him fare, McKinnon awoke from his visioned sleep, He opened his casement and looked on the deep; He looked to the mountains, he looked to the shore, The vision amazed him and troubled him sore, He never had heard of the rite before; But all was so plain, he thought meet to obey, He durst not decline, and he would not delay. Uprose the abbot, uprose the morn, Uprose the sun from the Bens of Lorn; And the bark her course to the northward framed, With all on board whom the saint had named. The clouds were journeying east the sky, The magic dyes of purple and green. How joyed the bark her sides to lave! She leaned to the lee, and she girdled the wave; Aloft on the stayless verge she hung, Light on the steep wave veered and swung, And the crests of the billows before her flung. Loud murmured the ocean with downward growl, The seal swam aloof and the dark sea fowl; And behind her, far to the southward, shone A pathway of snow on the waste alone. But now the dreadful strand they gain, And what they beheld they did not know. The sheets of foam and the clouds of spray, And the groans that rushed from the portals gray, Appalled their hearts, and drove them away. They wheeled their bark to the east around, X Or upright ranged in horrid array, With purfle of green o'er the darksome gray. Their path was on wonderous pavement of old, Its blocks all cast in some giant mould, Fair hewn and grooved by no mortal hand, But when they drew nigh to the chancel of ocean, |