Behind, the wondrous city stretches dim With castle, spire, and column, from the line Of wavy Pentland, to the pillar'd range That keeps in memory the men who fell In the great war that closed at Waterloo. Whitely the pillars gleam against the hill, While the light flashes by. The wondrous town, That keeps not summer, when the summer comes, Without her gates, but takes it to her heart! The mighty shadow of the castle falls! At noon athwart deep gardens, roses blow And fade in hearing of the chariot-wheel. High-lifted capital that look'st abroad, With the great lion couchant at thy side, O'er fertile plains emboss'd with woods and towns; O'er silent Leith's smoke-huddled spires and masts; O'er unlink'd Forth, slow wandering with her isles To ocean's azure, spreading faint and wide, O'er which the morning comes--if but thy spires Were dipp'd in deeper sunshine, tenderer shade, Through bluer heavens rolled a brighter sun, The traveller would call thee peer of Rome, Or Florence, white-tower'd, on the mountain side. Burns trod thy pavements with his ploughman's stoop And genius-flaming eyes. Scott dwelt in thee, The homeliest-featured of the demigods; Apollo, with a deep Northumbrian burr, And Jeffrey with his sharp-cut critic face, And Lockhart with his antique Roman taste, And Wilson, reckless of his splendid gifts, As hill-side of its streams in thunder rain; And Chalmers, with those heavy slumberous lids, Veiling a prophet's eyes; and Miller, too, Primeval granite amongst smooth-rubb'd men; Of all the noble race but one remains, Aytoun--with silver bugle at his side, That echo'd through the gorges of romance-- Pity that 'tis so seldom at his lip!