Boon nature scattered, free and wild, Each plant or flower, the mountain's child. Here eglantine embalmed the air, Hawthorn and hazel mingled there; 215 The primrose pale and violet flower, Found in each cliff a narrow bower; Fox-glove and night-shade, side by side, Emblems of punishment and pride, Grouped their dark hues with every stain 220 The weather-beaten crags retain. With boughs that quaked at every breath, Grey birch and aspen wept beneath; Aloft, the ash and warrior oak Cast anchor in the rifted rock; 225 And, higher yet, the pine-tree hung His shattered trunk, and frequent flung, Where seemed the cliffs to meet on high, His bows athwart the narrowed sky. Highest of all, where white peaks glanced, 230 Where glist'ning streamers waved and danced, The wanderer's eye could barely view The summer heaven's delicious blue; So wondrous wild, the whole might seem The scenery of a fairy dream. 235 XIII Onward, amid the copse 'gan peep A narrow inlet, still and deep, Affording scarce such breadth of brim As served the wild duck's brood to swim. Lost for a space, through thickets veering, 240 But broader when again appearing, Tall rocks and tufted knolls their face Could on the dark-blue mirror trace; And farther as the Hunter strayed, Still broader sweep its channels made. 245 The shaggy mounds no longer stood, Emerging from entangled wood, But, wave-encircled, seemed to float, Like castle girdled with its moat; Yet broader floods extending still 250 Divide them from their parent hill, Till each, retiring, claims to be An islet in an inland sea. XIV And now, to issue from the glen, No pathway meets the wanderer's ken, 255 Unless he climb, with footing nice, A far projecting precipice. The broom's tough roots his ladder made, The hazel saplings lent their aid; And thus an airy point he won, 260 Where, gleaming with the setting sun, One burnished sheet of living gold, Loch Katrine lay beneath him rolled, In all her length far winding lay, With promontory, creek, and bay, 265 And island that, empurpled bright, Floated amid the livelier light, And mountains, that like giants stand, To sentinel enchanted land. High on the south, huge Benvenue 270 Down on the lake in masses threw Crags, knolls, and mounds, confusedly hurled, The fragments of an earlier world; A wildering forest feathered o'er His ruined sides and summit hoar, 275 While on the north, through middle air, Ben-an heaved high his forehead bare. XV