Scott's Lady of the Lake

Unless he climb, with footing nice,[38 - Careful.]
A far projecting precipice.
The broom’s[39 - A bushy shrub common in western Europe.] tough roots his ladder made,
The hazel saplings lent their aid;
And thus an airy point he won,
Where, gleaming with the setting sun,
One burnish’d sheet of living gold,
Loch Katrine lay beneath him roll’d,
In all her length far winding lay,
With promontory, creek, and bay,
And islands that, empurpled bright,[40 - Used adverbially.]
Floated amid the livelier light,
And mountains, that like giants stand,
To sentinel enchanted land.
High on the south, huge Benvenue
Down on the lake in masses threw
Crags, knolls, and mounds, confusedly hurl’d,
The fragments of an earlier world;
A wildering forest feather’d o’er
His ruin’d sides and summit hoar,
While on the north, through middle air,
Ben-an[41 - “Little Mountain,” east of Loch Katrine.] heaved high his forehead bare.

XV

From the steep promontory gazed
The stranger, raptured and amazed,
And, “What a scene were here,” he cried,
“For princely pomp, or churchman’s pride!
On this bold brow, a lordly tower;
In that soft vale, a lady’s bower;
On yonder meadow, far away,
The turrets of a cloister gray;
How blithely might the bugle horn
Chide, on the lake, the lingering morn!
How sweet, at eve, the lover’s lute
Chime, when the groves were still and mute!
And, when the midnight moon should lave
Her forehead in the silver wave,
How solemn on the ear would come
The holy matins’[42 - The first canonical hour of the day in the Catholic Church, beginning properly at midnight. Here referring to the striking of the hour by the "cloister" bell.] distant hum,
While the deep peal’s commanding tone
Should wake, in yonder islet lone,
A sainted hermit from his cell,
To drop a bead[43 - “Drop a bead,” i.e., say a prayer. The rosary used by Catholics is a string of beads by which count may be kept of the prayers recited.] with every knell —
And bugle, lute, and bell, and all,
Should each bewilder’d stranger call
To friendly feast, and lighted hall.

XVI

“Blithe were it then to wander here!
But now, – beshrew yon nimble deer, —
Like that same hermit’s, thin and spare,
The copse must give my evening fare;
Some mossy bank my couch must be,
Some rustling oak my canopy.
Yet pass we that; the war and chase
Give little choice of resting place; —
A summer night, in greenwood spent,
Were but to-morrow’s merriment:
But hosts may in these wilds abound,
Such as are better miss’d than found;
To meet with Highland plunderers here
Were worse than loss of steed or deer. —
I am alone; – my bugle strain
May call some straggler of the train;
Or, fall[44 - Happen; befall.] the worst that may betide,
Ere now this falchion has been tried.”

XVII

But scarce again his horn he wound,
When lo! forth starting at the sound,
From underneath an aged oak,
That slanted from the islet rock,
A damsel guider of its way,
A little skiff shot to the bay,
That round the promontory steep
Led its deep line in graceful sweep,
Eddying, in almost viewless wave,
The weeping willow twig to lave,
And kiss, with whispering sound and slow,
The beach of pebbles bright as snow.
The boat had touch’d this silver strand,
Just as the Hunter left his stand,
And stood conceal’d amid the brake,
To view this Lady of the Lake.
The maiden paused, as if again
She thought to catch the distant strain.
With head upraised, and look intent,
And eye and ear attentive bent,
And locks flung back, and lips apart,
Like monument of Grecian art,
In listening mood, she seem’d to stand,
The guardian Naiad[45 - (Nā´yăd.) In classic mythology, one of the lower female deities who presided over lakes, streams, and fountains, as the Nymphs presided over mountains, forests, and meadows.] of the strand.

XVIII

And ne’er did Grecian chisel trace