Nor were these earth-born castles bare,
      Nor lacked they many a banner fair;
      For, from their shivered brows displayed,
      Far o’er the unfathomable glade,
      All twinkling with the dew-drop’s sheen,
      The briar-rose fell in streamers green,
      And creeping shrubs, of thousand dyes,
      Waved in the west wind’s summer sighs.

      Boon nature scattered, free and wild,
      Each plant or flower, the mountain’s child. 
      Here eglantine embalmed the air,
      Hawthorn and hazel mingled there;
      The primrose pale and violet flower,
      Found in each cliff a narrow bower;
      Foxglove and nightshade, side by side,
      Emblems of punishment and pride,
      Grouped their dark hues with every stain,
      The weather-beaten crags retain. 
      With boughs that quaked at every breath,
      Grey birch and aspen wept beneath;
      Aloft the ash and warrior oak
      Cast anchor in the rifted rock;
      And higher yet the pine tree hung
      His shatter’d trunk, and frequent flung,
      Where seemed the cliffs to meet on high,
      His boughs athwart the narrowed sky
      Highest of all, where white peaks glanced,
      Where glistening streamers waved and danced,
      The wanderer’s eye could barely view
      The summer heaven’s delicious blue;
      So wondrous wild, the whole might seem
      The scenery of a fairy dream. 
      Onward, amid the copse ’gan peep
      A narrow inlet still and deep,
      Affording scarce such breadth of brim,
      As served the wild duck’s brood to swim;
      Lost for a space, through thickets veering,
      But broader when again appearing,
      Tall rocks and tufted knolls their face
      Could on the dark blue mirror trace;
      And farther as the hunter stray’d,
      Still broader sweep its channels made. 
      The shaggy mounds no longer stood,
      Emerging from entangled wood,
      But, wave-encircled, seemed to float,
      Like castle girdled with its moat;
      Yet broader floods extending still,
      Divide them from their parent hill,
      Till each, retiring, claims to be
      An islet in an inland sea.

      And now, to issue from the glen,
      No pathway meets the wanderer’s ken,
      Unless he climb, with footing nice,
      A far projecting precipice. 
      The broom’s tough roots his ladder made,
      The hazel saplings lent their aid;
      And thus an airy point he won. 
      Where, gleaming with the setting sun,
      One burnish’d sheet of living gold,
      Loch-Katrine lay beneath him rolled;
      In all her length far winding lay,
      With promontory, creek, and bay,
      And islands that, empurpled bright,
      Floated amid the livelier light;
      And mountains,