There is a temple, one not made with hands, The vaulted firmament: Far in the woods,
Almost beyond the sound of city-chime, At intervals heard through the breezeless air; When not the limberest leaf is seen to move, Save where the linnet lights upon the spray; When not a floweret bends its little stalk,
Save where the bee alights upon the bloom;— There, rapt in gratitude, in joy, and love, The man of God will pass the Sabbath-noon; Silence his praise: his disembodied thoughts, Loosed from the load of words, will high ascend Beyond the empyrean.—
Nor yet less pleasing at the heavenly throne, The Sabbath-service of the shepherd-boy.
In some lone glen, where every sound is lulled To slumber, save the tinkling of the rill,
Or bleat of lamb, or hovering falcon's cry,
Stretched on the sward, he reads of Jesse's son ;
Or sheds a tear o'er him to Egypt sold,
And wonders why he weeps: the volume closed,
With thyme-sprig laid between the leaves, he sings The sacred lays, his weekly lesson, conned
With meikle care beneath the lowly roof,
Where humble lore is learnt, where humble worth Pines unrewarded by a thankless state. Thus reading, hymning, all alone, unseen, The shepherd-boy the Sabbath holy keeps, Till on the heights he marks the straggling bands Returning homeward from the house of prayer. In peace they home resort. O blissful days! When all men worship God as conscience wills. Far other times our fathers' grandsires knew, A virtuous race, to godliness devote.
What though the sceptic's scorn hath dared to soil The record of their fame! What though the men Of worldly minds have dared to stigmatize
The sister-cause, Religion and the Law,
With Superstition's name! yet, yet their deeds, Their constancy in torture, and in death,-
These on tradition's tongue still live, these shall On history's honest page be pictured bright
To latest times. Perhaps some bard, whose muse Disdains the servile strain of Fashion's quire, May celebrate their unambitious names. With them each day was holy, every hour They stood prepared to die, a people doomed To death ;-old men, and youths, and simple maids. With them each day was holy; but that morn
On which the angel said, See where the Lord Was laid, joyous arose; to die that day
Was bliss. Long ere the dawn, by devious ways, O'er hills, thro' woods, o'er dreary wastes, they sought The upland moors, where rivers, there but brooks, Dispart to different seas: Fast by such brooks,
A little glen is sometimes scooped, a plat
and flowers that strangers seem
Amid the heathery wild, that all around Fatigues the eye: in solitudes like these Thy persecuted children, SCOTIA, foiled A tyrant's and a bigot's bloody laws:
There, leaning on his spear, (one of the array, Whose gleam, in former days, had scathed the rose On England's banner, and had powerless struck The infatuate monarch and his wavering host,) The lyart veteran heard the word of God By Cameron thundered, or by Renwick poured In gentle stream: then rose the song, the loud Acclaim of praise; the wheeling plover ceased Her plaint; the solitary place was glad,
And on the distant cairns, the watcher's ear*
* Sentinels were placed on the surrounding hills, to give warning of the approach of the military.
Caught doubtfully at times the breeze-borne note.
years more gloomy followed; and no more The assembled people dared, in face of day,
To worship God, or even at the dead
Of night, save when the wintry storm raved fierce, And thunder-peals compelled the men of blood To couch within their dens; then dauntlessly The scattered few would meet, in some deep dell By rocks o'er-canopied, to hear the voice, Their faithful pastor's voice: He by the gleam Of sheeted lightning oped the sacred book, And words of comfort spake: Over their souls His accents soothing came,-as to her young The heathfowl's plumes, when, at the close of eve, She gathers in, mournful, her brood dispersed By murderous sport, and o'er the remnant spreads Fondly her wings; close nestling 'neath her breast, They, cherished, cower amid the purple blooms.
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