When I closed the books, and placed them on their shelves, the rain peppered the walls as pertinaciously as when I took them down. Next day it rained still. It was impossible to go out; the volumes of the _Monthly Review_ were sucked oranges, and could yield no further amusement or interest. What was to be done? I took refuge with the Muse. Certain notions had got into my brain,--certain stories had taken possession of my memory,--and these I resolved to versify and finally to dispose of. Here are "Poems Written in a Skye Bothy." The competent critic will see at a glance that they are the vilest plagiarisms,--that as throughout I have called the sky "blue" and the grass "green," I have stolen from every English poet from Chaucer downwards; he will observe also, from occasional uses of "all" and "and," that they are the merest Tennysonian echoes. But they served their purpose,--they killed for me the languor of the rainy days, which is more than they are likely to do for the critic. Here they are:-- [Sidenote: The Well.] THE WELL. The well gleams by a mountain road Where travellers never come and go From city proud, or poor abode That frets the dusky plain below. All silent as the mouldering lute That in a ruin long hath lain; All empty as a dead man's brain-- The path untrod by human foot, That, thread-like, far away doth run To savage peaks, whose central spire Bids farewell to the setting sun, Good-morrow to the morning's fire. The country stretches out beneath In gloom of wood and gray of heath; The carriers' carts with mighty loads Black dot the long white country roads; The stationary stain of smoke Is crown'd by spire and castle rock; A silent line of vapoury white, The train creeps on from shade to light; The river journeys to the main Throughout a vast and endless plain, Far-shadow'd by the labouring breast Of thunder leaning o'er the west. A rough uneven waste of gray, The landscape stretches day by day; But strange the sight when evening sails Athwart the mountains and the vales; Furnace and forge, by daylight tame, Uplift their restless towers of flame, And cast a broad and angry glow Upon the rain-cloud hanging low; As dark and darker grows the hour, More wild their colour, vast their power, Till by the glare in shepherd's shed, The mother sings her babe a-bed: From town to town the pedlar wades Through far-flung crimson lights and shades.