I never dream'd would sink On a peak that mounts world's brink, Of sunlight, such a blink, Morag! as thine. As the charmings of a spell, Working in their cell, So dissolves the heart where dwell Thy graces divine.
Come, counsel me, my comrades, While dizzy fancy lingers, Did ever flute become, lads, The motion of such fingers? Did ever isle or Mor-hir,[137] Or see or hear, before her, Such gracefulness, adore her Yet, woes me, how concealing From her I 've wedded, dare I? Still, homeward bound, I tarry, And Jeanie's eye is weary, Her truant unrevealing. The glow of love I feel, Not all the linns of Sheil, Nor Cruachan's snow avail To cool to congealing.[138]....
My very brain is humming, sirs, As a swarm of bees were bumming, sirs, And I fear distraction 's coming, sirs, My passion such a flame is. My very eyes are blinding, sirs, Scarce giant mountains finding, sirs, Nor height nor distance minding, sirs, The crag, as Corrie, tame is....
[133] Morag's beauties are so exquisite, that all Europe, nay, the Pope would be inflamed to behold them. The passage is omitted, though worthy of the satiric vein of Mephistopheles.
[134] The gannet, or the _stranger-bird_, from his foreign derivation and periodic visits to the Islands.
[135] A snowy grass, well known in the moors.
[137] The mainland, or _terra firma_, is called Morir by the islanders.
Though this, in some respects, may not rank high among Macdonald's compositions, it is one of the most natural and earnest. His appeal to the hesitating chiefs of Sleat and Dunvegan, is a curious specimen of indignation, suppressed by prudence, and of contempt disguised under the mask of civility.