Poetry > Lady of the lake

26
THE LADY OF THE LAKE.
Canto I
III.
Yell’d on the view the opening pack :
Rock, glen, and cavern, paid them back :
To many a mingled sound at once
The awaken’d mountain gave response,
A hundred dogs bay’d deep and strong,
Clatter’d a hundred steeds along,
Their peal the merry horns rung out,
A hundred voices join’d the shout;
With hark and whoop and wild halloo,
No rest Benvoirlich’s echoes knew,1
Far from the tumult fled the roe,
Close in her covert cower’d the doe,
The falcon, from her cairn on high,
Cast on the rout a wondering eye,
Till far beyond her piercing ken
The hurricane had swept the glen.
cavern, from a sort of retreat among the rocks on the south side,
said, by tradition, to have been the abode of a giant. In latter
times, it was the refuge of robbers and banditti, who have been
only extirpated within these forty or fifty years. Strictly speak¬
ing, this stronghold is not a cave, as the name would imply, but
a sort of small enclosure, or recess, surrounded with large rocks,
and open above head. It may have been originally designed as a
toil for deer, who might get in from the outside, but would find
it difficult to return. This opinion prevails among the old sports¬
men and deer-stalkers in the neighbourhood.
1 [Benvoirlich, a mountain comprehended in the cluster of the
Grampians, at the head of the valley of the Garry, a river which
springs from its base. It rises to an elevation of 3330 feet above
the level of the sea.