Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE PARK OF KELBURN CASTLE, by DAVID MACBETH MOIR


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE PARK OF KELBURN CASTLE, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: A lovely eve! Though yet it is but spring
Last Line: By dwelling on the tranquil and serene!
Alternate Author Name(s): Delta
Subject(s): Castles; Scotland


I.

A LOVELY eve! though yet it is but spring
Led on by April,—a refulgent eve,
With its soft west wind, and its mild white clouds,
Silently floating through the depths of blue.
The bird, from out the thicket, sends a gush
Of song, that heralds summer, and calls forth
The squirrel from its fungus-covered cave
In the old oak. Where do the conies sport?
Lo! from the shelter of yon flowering furze,
O'ermantling, like an aureate crown, the brow
Of the grey rock, with sudden bound, and stop
And start, the mother with her little ones,
Cropping the herbage in its tenderest green;
While overhead the elm, and oak, and ash,
Weave for the hundredth time their annual boughs,
Bright with their varied leaflets.
Hark! the bleat
From yon secluded haunt, where hill from hill
Diverging leaves, in sequestration calm,
A holm of pastoral loveliness: the lamb,
Screened from the biting east, securely roams
There, in wild gambol with its peers, on turf
Like emerald velvet, soft and smooth; and starts
Aside from the near waterfall, whose sheet
Winds foaming down the rocks precipitous,
Now seen, and now half-hidden by the trunks
Contorted, and the wide umbrageous boughs
Of time and tempest-nurtured woods. Away
From the sea-murmur ceaseless, up between
The green secluding hills, that hem it round
As 'twere with conscious love, stands Kelburn House,
With its grey turrets, in baronial state,
A proud memento of the days when men
Thought but of war and safety. Stately pile
And lovely woods! not often have mine eyes
Gazed o'er a scene more picturesque, or more
Heart-touching in its beauty. Thou wert once
The guardian of these valleys, and the foe
Approaching heard, between himself and thee,
The fierce, down-thundering, mocking waterfall;
While, on thy battlements, in glittering mail,
The warder glided; and the sentinel,—
As neared the stranger horseman to thy gates,
And gave the pass-word, which no answer found,—
Plucked from his quiver the unerring shaft,
Which, from Kilwinning's spire, had oft brought down
The mock Papingo.
Mournfully, alas!
Yet in thy quietude not desolate,
Now, like a relic of the times gone by,
Down from thy verdant throne, upon the sea,
Which glitters like a sheet of molten gold,
Thou lookest thus, at eventide, while sets,
In opal and in amethystine hues,
The day o'er distant Arran, with its peaks
Sky-piercing, yet o'erclad with winter's snows
In desolate grandeur; and the cottaged fields
Of nearer Bute smile in their vernal green,
A picture of repose. High overhead
The gull, far-shrieking, through yon stern ravine
Of wild, rude rocks, where brawls the mountain stream,
Wings to the sea, and seeks, beyond its foams,
Its own precipitous cliff upon the coast
Of fair and fertile Cumbrae; while the rook,
Conscious of coming eventide, forsakes
The leafing woods, and round the chimneyed roofs
Caws as he wheels, alights, and then anon
Renews his circling flight in clamorous joy.

II.

Mountains that face bald Arran! though the sun
Now, with the ruddy lights of eventide,
Gilds every pastoral summit on which Peace,
Like a descended angel, sits enthroned,
Forth gazing on a scene as beautiful
As Nature e'er outspread for mortal eye;
And but the voice of distant waterfall
Sings lullaby to bird and beast, and wings
Of insects murmurous, multitudinous,
That in the low, red, level beams commix,
And weave their elfin dance,—another time
And other tones were yours, when on each peak
At hand, and through Argyle and Lanark shires,
Startling black midnight, flared the beacon lights,
And when from out the west the castled steep
Of Broadwick reddened with responsive blaze.
A night was that of doubt and of suspense,
Of danger and of daring, in the which
The fate of Scotland in the balance hung
Trembling, and up and down wavered the scales;
But Hope grew brighter with the rising sun,
And Dawn looked out, to see upon the shore
The Bruce's standard floating on the gale,
A call to freedom!—barks from every isle
Pouring with clumps of spears!—from every dell
The throng of mail-clad men!—vassal and lord,
With ponderous curtal-axe, and broadsword keen,
Banner and bow; while, overhead, afar
And near, the bugles rang amid the rocks,
Echoing in wild reverberation shrill,
And scaring from his heathery lair the deer,
The osprey from his island cliff of rest.

III.

But not alone by that fierce trumpet-call,
Through grove and glen, on mount and pastoral hill,
The brute and bird were roused—by it again,
And by the signal blaze upon the hills,
And by the circling of the fiery cross,
Then once again were Scotland's children roused;—
With swelling hearts and loud acclaim they heard
The summons, saw the signal, and cast off
With indignation in the dust the weeds
Of their inglorious thraldom. Every hearth
Wiped the red rust from its ancestral sword,
And sent it forth avenging to the field
In brightness—but with Freedom to be sheathed!
Yea, while the mother and the sister mourned,
And while the maiden, half-despairingly,
Wept for her love, who might return no more,
The grey-haired father, leaning on his staff,
Infirm, felt for a moment to his heart
The youthful fire return, and inly mourned
That he could do no more—no more than send
A blessing after his young gallant boy,
Armed for the battles of his native land,
Nor wished him back, unless with Freedom won!

IV.

To olden times my reveries have roamed—
While twilight hangs above her silver star,
Which in the waveless deep reflected shines—
Have roamed to glory and war, and the fierce days
Of Scotland's renovation, when the Bruce
Beheld the sun of Bannockburn go down,
And wept for gladness that the land was free!
Fitful and fair, yet clouded with a haze,
As 'twere the mantle of uncertainty—
The veil of doubt—to memory awakes
The bright heart-stirring past, when human life
(For but its flashing points to us remain)
Was half romance; and were it not that yet,
In stream, and crag, and isle, and crumbling walls
Of keep and castle, still remains to us
Physical proof that history is no mere
Hallucination, oftentimes the mind
(So different is the present from the past)
Would deem its pageant an illusion all.

V.

Arran, and Bute, and Cumbrae, and ye peaks
Glowing like sapphires in the utmost west,
Sweet scenes of beauty and peace, farewell! The eyes
But of a passing visitor are mine
On you. Before this radiant eve, enshrined
For ever in my inmost soul, ye were
Known but in name; but now ye are mine own,
One of the pictures which fond memory,
In musing phantasy, will oft-times love
To conjure up, gleaning, amid the stir
And strife of multitudes, as 'twere repose,
By dwelling on the tranquil and serene!





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