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 burnished 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 that like giants stand
To sentinel enchanted land. 
High on the south, huge Benvenue
Down to the lake in masses threw
Crags, knolls, and mounds, confusedly hurled,
The fragments of an earlier world;
A wildering forest feathered o’er
His ruined sides and summit hoar,
While on the north, through middle air,
Ben-an heaved high his forehead bare.

XV.

From the steep promontory gazed
The stranger, raptured and amazed,
And, ‘What a scene were here,’ he cried,
’For princely pomp or churchman’s pride! 
On this bold brow, a lordly tower;
In that soft vale, a lady’s bower;
On yonder meadow far away,
The turrets of a cloister gray;
How blithely might the bugle-horn
Chide on the lake the lingering morn! 
How sweet at eve the lover’s lute
Chime when the groves were still and mute! 
And when the midnight moon should lave
Her forehead in the silver wave,
How solemn on the ear would come
The holy matins’ distant hum,
While the deep peal’s commanding tone
Should wake, in yonder islet lone,
A sainted hermit from his cell,
To drop a bead with every knell! 
And bugle, lute, and bell, and all,
Should each bewildered stranger call
To friendly feast and lighted hall.

XVI.

’Blithe were it then to wander here! 
But now—­beshrew yon nimble deer—­
Like that same hermit’s, thin and spare,
The copse must give my evening fare;
Some mossy bank my couch must be,
Some rustling oak my canopy. 
Yet pass we that; the war and chase
Give little choice of resting-place;—­
A summer night in greenwood spent
Were but to-morrow’s merriment: 
But hosts may in these wilds abound,
Such as are better missed than found;
To meet with Highland plunderers here
Were worse than loss of steed or deer.—­
I am alone;—­my bugle-strain
May call some straggler of the train;
Or, fall the worst that may betide,
Ere now this falchion has been tried.’

XVII.