Poetry > Lady of the lake

82
THE LADY OF THE LAKE.
Canto II,
Eather will Ellen Douglas dwell
A votaress in Maronnan’s cell;1
Eather through realms beyond the sea,
Seeking the world’s cold charity,
Where ne’er was spoke a Scottish word,
And ne’er the name of Douglas heard,
An outcast pilgrim will she rove,
Than wed the man she cannot love.2
XIV.
“ Thou shakest, good friend, thy tresses grey—
That pleading look, what can it say
But what I own ?—I grant him brave,
But wild as Bracklinn’s thundering wave ;3
1 The parish of Kilmaronock, at the eastern extremity of
Loch-Lomond, derives its name from a cell or chapel, dedicated to
Saint Maronoch, or Marnoch, or Maronnan, about whose sanctity
very little is now remembered. There is a fountain devoted to
him in the same parish; but its virtues, like the merits of its
patron, have fallen into oblivion.
3 [“ Ellen is most exquisitely drawn, and could not have been
improved by contrast. She is beautiful, frank, affectionate,
rational, and playful, combining the innocence of a child with
the elevated sentiments and courage of a heroine."—Quarterly
iJewt’eM/.]
3 This is a beautiful cascade made by a mountain stream called
the Keltie, at a place called the Bridge of Bracklinn, about a
mile from the village of Callendar in Menteith. Above a chasm,
where the brook precipitates itself from a height of at least fifty
feet, there is thrown, for the convenience of the neighbourhood,
a rustic footbridge, of about three feet in breadth, and without
ledges, which is scarcely to be crossed by a stranger without
awe and apprehension.