XXVII.

CAVE OF STAFFA.

(AFTER THE CROWD HAD DEPARTED.)

THANKS for the lessons of this Spot-fit school For the presumptuous thoughts that would assign divine;

Mechanic laws to agency

And, measuring heaven by earth, would overrule Infinite Power. The pillared vestibule,

Expanding yet precise, the roof embowed,

Might seem designed to humble man, when proud
Of his best workmanship by plan and tool.
Down-bearing with his whole Atlantic weight
Of tide and tempest on the Structure's base,
And flashing to that Structure's topmost height,
Ocean has proved its strength, and of its grace
In calms is conscious, finding for his freight
Of softest music some responsive place.

XXVIII.

CAVR OF STAFFA.

YE shadowy Beings, that have rights and claims
In every cell of Fingal's mystic Grot,

Where are ye? Driven or venturing to the spot,
Our fathers glimpses caught of your thin Frames,
And, by your mien and bearing, knew your names ;
And they could hear his ghostly song who trod
Earth, till the flesh lay on him like a load,

While he struck his desolate harp without hopes or aims.
Vanished ye are, but subject to recal;

Why keep we else the instincts whose dread law
Ruled here of yore, till what men felt they saw,
Not by black arts but magic natural!

If

eyes be still sworn vassals of belief,

Yon light shapes forth a Bard, that shade a Chief.

XXIX.

FLOWERS ON THE TOP OF THE PILLARS AT THE
ENTRANCE OF THE CAVE.

HOPE smiled when your nativity was cast,

Children of Summer! Ye fresh Flowers that brave
What Summer here escapes not, the fierce wave,
And whole artillery of the western blast,
Battering the Temple's front, its long-drawn nave
Smiting, as if each moment were their last.
But ye, bright Flowers, on frieze and architrave
Survive, and once again the Pile stands fast:
Calm as the Universe, from specular towers
Of heaven contemplated by Spirits pure
With mute astonishment, it stands sustained
Through every part in symmetry, to endure,
Unhurt, the assault of Time with all his hours,
As the supreme Artificer ordained.

XXX.

IONA.

ON to Iona!-What can she afford

To us save matter for a thoughtful sigh,
Heaved over ruin with stability

In urgent contrast? To diffuse the WORD

(Thy Paramount, mighty Nature! and Time's Lord)
Her Temples rose, 'mid pagan gloom; but why,
Even for a moment, has our verse deplored

Their wrongs, since they fulfilled their destiny?
And when, subjected to a common doom
Of mutability, those far-famed Piles
Shall disappear from both the sister Isles,
Iona's Saints, forgetting not past days,

Garlands shall wear of amaranthine bloom,

While heaven's vast sea of voices chants their praise.

XXXI

IONA.

(UPON LANDING.)

How sad a welcome! To each voyager

Some ragged child holds up for sale a store

Of wave-worn pebbles, pleading on the shore
Where once came monk and nun with gentle stir,
Blessings to give, news ask, or suit prefer.

Yet is yon neat trim church a grateful speck
Of novelty amid the sacred wreck

Strewn far and wide. Think, proud Philosopher!
Fallen though she be, this Glory of the west,

Still on her sons, the beams of mercy shine;

And hopes, perhaps more heavenly bright than thine, *A

grace by thee unsought and unpossest,

A faith more fixed, a rapture more divine

Shall gild their passage to eternal rest.'