O blest are the Hearers, and proud be the Hand Of the pleasure it spreads through so thankful a Band;

I am glad for him, blind as he is! -all the while If they speak 'tis to praise, and they praise with a smile.

That tall Man, a Giant in bulk and in height,
Not an inch of his body is free from delight;
Can he keep himself still, if he would? oh, not he!
The music stirs in him like wind through a tree.

There's a Cripple who leans on his Crutch; like a

Tower

That long has leaned forward, leans hour after hour!

A Mother, whose Spirit in fetters is bound,
While she dandles the babe in her arms to the sound.

Now, Coaches and Chariots! roar on like a stream; Here are twenty souls happy as Souls in a dream : They are deaf to your murmurs they care not

for you,

Nor what ye are flying, nor what ye pursue!

XVII.

STEPPING WESTWARD.

While my Fellow-traveller and I were walking by the side of Loch Ketterine, one fine evening after sun-set, in our road to a Hut where in the course of our Tour we had been hospitably entertained some weeks before, we met, in one of the loneliest parts of that solitary region, two well-dressed Women, one of whom said to us, by way of greeting, "What you are stepping westward."

"WHAT you are stepping westward?”
-'Twould be a wildish destiny,

If we, who thus together roam
In a strange Land, and far from home,
Were in this place the guests of Chance:
Yet who would stop, or fear to advance,
Though home or shelter he had none,
With such a Sky to lead him on?

"Yea."

The dewy ground was dark and cold;
Behind, all gloomy to behold;

And stepping westward seemed to be

A kind of heavenly destiny:

3

I liked the greeting; 'twas a sound
Of something without place or bound;
And seemed to give me spiritual right
To travel through that region bright.

The voice was soft, and she who spake
Was walking by her native Lake :
The salutation had to me

The very sound of courtesy:
Its power was felt; and while my eye
Was fixed upon the glowing sky,
The echo of the voice enwrought
A human sweetness with the thought
Of travelling through the world that lay
Before me in my endless way.

XVIII.

GLEN-ALMAIN,

OR

THE NARROW GLEN.

In this still place, remote from men,
Sleeps Ossian, in the NARROW GLEN ;
In this still place, where murmurs on
But one meek Streamlet, only one :
He
sang of battles, and the breath
Of stormy war, and violent death;

And should, methinks, when all was past,

Have rightfully been laid at last

Where rocks were rudely heaped, and rent

As by a spirit turbulent;

Where sights were rough, and sounds were wild, And every thing unreconciled;

In some complaining, dim retreat,

For fear and melancholy meet;
But this is calm; there cannot be
A more entire tranquillity.

Does then the Bard sleep here indeed? Or is it but a groundless creed ?

What matters it? I blame them not

Whose Fancy in this lonely Spot
Was moved; and in this way expressed
Their notion of its perfect rest.

A Convent, even a hermit's Cell

Would break the silence of this Dell:

It is not quiet, is not ease;
But something deeper far than these:
The separation that is here

Is of the grave; and of austere
And happy feelings of the dead :
And, therefore, was it rightly said
That Ossian, last of all his race!
Lies buried in this lonely place.