Poetry > Lady of the lake

36
THE LADY OF THE LAKE.
Canto I
Shooting abruptly from the dell
Its thunder-splinter’d pinnacle;
Round many an insulated mass,
The native bulwarks of the pass,1
Huge as the tower which builders vain
Presumptuous piled on Shinar’s plain.3
The rocky summits, split and rent,
Form’d turret, dome, or battlement,
Or seem’d fantastically set
With cupola or minaret,
Wild crests as pagod ever deck’d,
Or mosque of Eastern architect.
Nor were these earth-born castles bare,3
Nor lack’d they many a banner fair ;
For, from their shiver’d brows displayed,
Far, o’er the unfathomable glade,
All twinkling with the dewdrops sheen,4
The brier-rose fell in streamers green,
And creeping shrubs, of thousand dyes,
Waved in the west-wind’s summer sighs.
XII.
Boon nature scatter’d, free and wild,
Each plant or flower, the mountain’s child.
1 [MS.—“ The mimic castles of the pass.”]
2 The Tower of Babel.—Genesis, xi. 1-9.
1 [MS.—(* Nor were these mighty bulwarks bare.”]
* [MS.—" Bright glistening with the dewdrops sheen.,,l