Ossian Collection > Aspects of poetry

338 THE THREE YARROWS. [xi.
' Once more, by Newark's Castle-gate,
Long left without a warder,
I stood, looked, listened, and with me,
Great minstrel of the Border !
And through the silent portal arch
Of mouldering Newark enter'd ;
And clomb the winding stair that once
Too timidly was mounted
By the ' last Minstrel ' (not the last !)
Ere he his Tale recounted.'
It was a day late in September, and, judging by the
natural features touched in Yarrow Revisited, the party
from Abbotsford did not go to the upper course of
Yarrow, where the braes are green and treeless, but
lingered among the woods of Bowhill, and about the
ruin of Newark. The leaves on these woods were sere,
but made redder or more golden as the breezes played,
or the autumnal sunshine shot through them.
As they wandered through the wooded banks that
overhang Yarrow, they
* Made a day of happy hours,
Their happy days recalling :
And if, as Yarrow, through the woods
And down the meadow ranging,
Did meet us with unaltered face.
Though we were changed and changing ;
If then, some natural shadows spread
Our inward prospect over.
The soul's deep valley was not slow
Its brightness to recover.'