Far east, where future days shall gild the wave, And west, where all the past hath found a grave. JOHN MALCOLM. TO ORKNEY. Land of the whirlpool, torrent, foam, Where oceans meet in maddening shock; The beetling cliff, the shelving holm, The dark, insidious rock; Land of the bleak, the treeless moor, The sterile mountain, seared and riven; The shapeless cairn, the ruined tower, Scathed by the bolts of heaven; The yawning gulf, the treacherous sand;— I love thee still, my native land! Land of the dark, the Runic rhyme, The mystic ring, the cavern hoar, The Scandinavian seer, sublime In legendary lore; Land of a thousand sea-kings’ graves— Those tameless spirits of the past, Fierce as their subject Arctic waves, Or hyperborean blast; Though polar billows round thee foam, I love thee!—thou wert once my home. With glowing heart and island lyre, Ah! would some native bard arise To sing, with all a poet’s fire, Thy stern sublimities— The roaring flood, the rushing stream, The promontory wild and bare, The pyramid where sea-birds scream Aloft in middle air, The Druid temple on the heath, Old even beyond tradition’s breath. Though I have roamed through verdant glades, In cloudless climes, ’neath azure skies; Or plucked from beauteous Orient meads Flowers of celestial dyes; Though I have laved in limpid streams That murmur over golden sands, Or basked amid the fulgent beams That flame o’er fairer lands; Or stretched me in the sparry grot,— My country! thou wert ne’er forgot. DAVID VEDDER. (Native of Deerness; 1790-1854.) THE TEMPLE OF NATURE. Talk not of temples; there is _one_, Built without hands, to mankind given. Its lamps are the meridian sun And all the stars of heaven; Its walls are the cerulean sky; Its floor the earth so green and fair; The dome is vast immensity,— All nature worships there! The Alps, arrayed in stainless snow, The Andean ranges yet untrod, At sunrise and at sunset glow Like altar-fires to God! A thousand fierce volcanoes blaze, As if with hallowed victims rare; And thunder lifts its voice in praise,— All nature worships there! The ocean heaves resistlessly, And pours his glittering treasures forth; His waves, the priesthood of the sea, Kneel on the shell-gemmed earth, And there emit a hollow sound, As if they murmured praise and prayer; On every side ’tis hallowed ground,— All nature worships there!