Page:The Poems of Henry Kendall (1920).djvu/371

 Behind me is the deep green dell

Where lives familiar light;

The leaves and flowers I know so well

Are gleaming in my sight.

And yonder is the mountain glen,

Where sings in trees unstirred

By breath of breeze or axe of men

The shining satin-bird.

The old weird cry of plover comes

Across the marshy ways,

And here the hermit hornet hums,

And here the wild bee strays.

No novel life or light I see,

On hill, in dale beneath:

All things around are known to me

Except this bit of heath.

This touching growth hath made me dream—

It sends my soul afar

To where the Scottish mountains gleam

Against the Northern star.

It droops—this plant—like one who grieves;

But, while my fancy glows,

There is that glory on its leaves

Which never robed the rose.

For near its wind-blown native spot

Were born, by crags uphurled,

The ringing songs of Walter Scott

That shook the whole wide world.

There haply by the sounding streams,

And where the fountains break,

He saw the darling of his dreams,

The Lady of the Lake.

And on the peaks where never leaf

Of lowland beauty grew,

Perhaps he met Clan Alpine's chief,

The rugged Roderick Dhu.