BOOK VIII

STEPPING WESTWARD

Stepping Westward

[While my fellow-traveller and I were walking by the side of Loch Katrine, one fine evening after sunset, in our road to a hut where, in the course of our tour, we had been hospitably entertained some weeks before, we met, in one of the loneliest parts of that solitary region, two well-dressed women, one of whom said to us, by way of greeting, “What! you are stepping westward ?"]

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HAT! you are stepping westward ?” "Yea"

"WHAT

'Twould be a wildish destiny,

If we, who thus together roam

In a strange land, and far from home,
Were in this place the guests of chance:
Yet who would stop, or fear to advance,
Though home or shelter he had none,
With such a sky to lead him on?

The dewy ground was dark and cold;
Behind, all gloomy to behold;

And stepping westward seemed to be
A kind of heavenly destiny;

I liked the greeting; 'twas a sound
Of something without place or bound;
And seemed to give me spiritual right
To travel through that region bright.

The voice was soft, and she who spake
Was walking by her native lake:
The salutation had to me

The very sound of courtesy:

Its power was felt; and while my eye
Was fixed upon the glowing sky,
The echo of the voice inwrought
A human sweetness with the thought
Of travelling through the world that lay
Before me in my endless way.

WORDSWORTH.

Friends in Paradise

THEY

gone

into the world of light!

HEY are all
And I alone sit lingering here;

Their very memory is fair and bright,

And

my sad thoughts doth clear:—

It glows and glitters in my cloudy breast,

Like stars upon some gloomy grove,
Or those faint beams in which this hill is drest
After the sun's remove.

I see them walking in an air of glory,

Whose light doth trample on my days: My days, which are at best but dull and hoary, Mere glimmering and decays.

O holy Hope! and high Humility,
High as the heavens above!

These are your walks, and you have shewed them

me,

To kindle my cold love.

Dear beauteous Death! the Jewel of the Just,
Shining nowhere but in the dark;
What mysteries do lie beyond thy dust,
Could man outlook that mark!

He that hath found some fledged bird's nest, may know

At first sight if the bird be flown;

But what fair dell or grove he sings in now,
That is to him unknown.