Page:The Bothie of Toper-na-fuosich - Clough (1848).pdf/38



O in the cottage with Adam the pupils five together Duly remained, and read, and looked no more for Philip, Philip at Balloch shooting and dancing with Lady Maria. Breakfast at eight, and now, for brief September daylight, Luncheon at two, and dinner at seven, or even later, Five full hours between for the loch and the glen and the mountain,— So in the joy of their life and glory of shooting jackets, So they read and roamed, the pupils five with Adam. What if autumnal shower came frequent and chill from the westward, What if on browner sward with yellow leaves besprinkled Gemming the crispy blade, the delicate gossamer gemming, Frequent and thick lay at morning the chilly head of hoar frost, Duly in matutine still, and daily, whatever the weather, Bathed in the rain and the frost and the mist with the Glory of headers Hope. Thither also at times of cold and of possible gutters Careless, unmindful, unconscious, would Hobbes, or e'er they departed, Come, in a heavy pea-coat his trouserless trunk enwrapping, Come, under coat over-brief those lusty legs displaying, All from the shirt to the slipper the natural man revealing. Duly there they bathed, and daily, the twain or the trio, There where of mornings was custom, Where over a ledge of granite Into a granite bason descended the amber torrent; Beautiful, very, to gaze-in ere plunging; beautiful also, Perfect as picture, as vision entrancing that comes to the sightless, Through the great granite jambs the stream and glen and mountain, Purple with heather the mountain, the level stream in foreground; Beautiful, seen by snatches in intervals of dressing, Morn after morn, unsought for, recurring; themselves too seeming Not as spectators, accepted into it, immingled, as truly Part of it as are the kine in the field lying there by the birches. So they bathed, they read, they roamed in glen and forest; Far amid blackest pines to the waterfall they shadow, Far up the long long glen to the loch, and the loch beyond it, Deep under huge red cliffs, a secret: and oft by the starlight,