The lines of Du Bartas have little meaning in themselves, and are untranslatable, being simply an attempt on the poet's part, in some odd moment of hilarity and abandon, to embody the notes of the skylark's song in something like articulate verse. The general sense of Macdonald's lines describing the irrepressible inclination of all living creatures to be jubilant and joyous at the return of spring, cannot better be rendered than in the first part of Scott's introductory stanza to the second canto of the Lady of the Lake, only that the return of spring in the one case, instead of the return of morn in the other, prompts to the outburst of gladness and song:-- "At morn the black-cock trims his jetty wing, 'Tis morning prompts the linnet's blithest lay, All Nature's children feel the matin spring Of life reviving, with reviving day; And while yon little bark glides down the bay, Wafting the stranger on his way again, Morn's genial influence roused a minstrel grey, And sweetly o'er the lake was heard thy strain, Mixed with the sounding harp, O white-hair'd Allan-bane!" CHAPTER VI. Severe Drought--The Drive by Coach from Fort-William to Kingussie--Breakfast at Moy--Where did Scott find Dominie Sampson's "Pro-di-gi-ous!"?--Professor Blackie's Poem on Glencoe. That the people of Lochaber and the Western Isles should be rejoicing in the advent of heavy rains [August 1869], and seriously glad at the reappearance of clouds in the heavens and mists upon the mountain tops, may seem odd enough to those who know anything of our usual meteorological characteristics; yet true it is, and of a verity that so it is, for here, as elsewhere, the heat was for many consecutive weeks intense, and the parching drought and fierce glare of a summer's sun from a constantly unclouded sky well nigh unbearable by man or beast, whether in the sheltered valley, where for days and days no breath of air shook the tiniest leaflet or ruffled the surface of the sullen tarn, or on the upland moor, where, if breath of air there was, it was hot and stifling as the breath of a furnace. Were it not for the occasional sea breezes, that sometimes of an evening swept over the almost pulseless deep, and copious falls of blessed night-dews, we should have been badly off indeed. But, as matters have turned out, we have much reason to be thankful, for if our crops are not quite so heavy as in average years, they are at least of excellent quality, and being ripe sooner than usual, we have a chance of getting them secured in a condition that will add immensely to their value. So thorough and persistent was the drought even with us, that springs failed that never before were known to refuse their waters to the thirsty; and water-courses that heretofore, even in the driest years, still presented shady pools connected by purling rivulets, were for weeks together arid and waterless as the course of an ancient lava stream.