"Afar they float, Wafting glad tidings to the sick man's couch: Raised on his arm, he lists the cadence close, Yet thinks he hears it still: his heart is cheered; He smiles on death; but, ah! a wish will rise-- Would I were now beneath that echoing roof! No lukewarm accents from my lips would flow; My heart would sing: and many a Sabbath day My steps should thither turn; or wandering far In solitary paths, where wild flowers blow, Then would I bless his name who led me forth From death's dark vale, to walk amid those sweets-- Who gives the bloom of health once more to glow Upon this cheek, and lights this languid eye." His description of the shepherd boy's Sabbath worship among the hills is a passage of great beauty. "It is not only in the sacred fane That homage should be paid to the Most High; There is a temple, one not made with hands, The vaulted firmament. Far in the woods, Almost beyond the sound of city chime, At intervals heard through the breezeless air; When not the limberest leaf is seen to move, Save when the linnet lights upon the spray When not a flow'ret bends its little stalk, Save when a bee alights upon the bloom-- Then rapt in gratitude, in joy, and love The man of God will pass his Sabbath noon; Silence his praise; his disembodied thoughts Loosed from the load of words, will high ascend Beyond the empyrean. Nor yet less pleasing at the heavenly throne, The Sabbath service of the shepherd boy! In some lone glen, when every sound is lulled To slumber, save the tinkling of the rill, Or bleat of lamb, or hovering falcon's cry, Stretched on the sward, he reads of Jesse's Son; Or sheds a tear o'er him to Egypt sold, And wonders why he weeps: the volume closed, With thyme sprig laid between the leaves, he sings The sacred lays, his weekly lesson conned With meikle care beneath the lowly roof, Where humble love is learnt, where humble worth Pines unrewarded by a thankless state. Thus reading, hymning, all alone, unseen, The shepherd boy the Sabbath holy keeps, Till on the heights he marks the straggling bands Returning homeward from the house of prayer." The hill worship of the Covenanters is also described with much beauty and pathos.