History of the Clan MacLean from its first settlement at Duard Castle, in the Isle of Mull, to the present period

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Appendix.
The terror deepened upon the sea,
The stillness grew on the wind;
They fled together, these fierce allies,
And left their spoil behind —
The one sole thing that glimmered white
And pure in all that world of night.
Part VI.
Two shapes passed over the sobbing sea
To land at Dunolly bay ;
One passed at sunrise, one at noon
Of the new-created daj'.
The first was a work of God undone;
The second, a devil's but ill begun.
And both were silent as outer space,
Both white as the upper air ;
As one mask lay to the rising sun.
And one to the noon-day bare.
Broke from the first a gasping breath.
Shone on the second the beads of death.
So the first was laid on t,he yellow sands
To catch the coming of day.
And the second was covered up close as night
To hide from the noon away;
And light of life came into the first,
But the second sweltered, a thing accurst.
Through the standing floods, by the lonely
ways.
In the tracks which the sheep had worn.
By Shamesh, he of the bloody hands,
That spotless lady is borne ;
But her sleeping sense of his care is fain,
And his bloody hands leave never a stain.
He had sighted her soul when it rose and sued
To his chief at her wild, wide eyes ;
And the sea and the shore through the live-
long night
Had been ringing as with her cries;
And they drew him whether he would or no
With the cords of a man, and he had to go.
So he found her there where the sea had laid
And left her, but not a sound
There breathed from her body, as mournfully
The waves fell sobbing round;
Then a stainless lily, alive or dead.
He gathered her up in his hands, and fled.
Then as bloody Shamesh was making the
shore.
And laying that white ladye
In the sun's warm bed on the yellow sands,
MacLean was putting to sea
With the waxen shape that in hate of hell
His limmer had molten and made so well.
But or ever the seeming widower
Had come with the seeming dead
To DifhoUy Bay, that first true twain
Were well on their journey sped, —
Ben Cruachan behind them, frowning above
And blocking the way of the foes of love.
Then they hail the ferry, and lightly go
Where heavily erst she came.
And the jubilant song of Glenara fall
Sets her frozen blood aflame.
And she lights at the gate, and she seems to
win
Her way like a chartered ghost within.
And she glides to her place by the arras
screen.
And faces her kinsmen all,
For a wandering breath that told of her death
Had called them together in hall:
" You must open your hearts as of yore to me.
For you get me back at the gift of the sea ! "
They opened their hearts, and they lent their
ears
To her tale, but on every dirk
A hand was locked in a fast embrace
And with promise of wilder work
Than ever had been in the age-long reign
Of hate 'twixt Clan Campbell and Clan Mac-
Lean.
Then the women swarmed round her and boi'e
her away.
As a leaf on a stream at flood,
They shrieked wild curses, but eased their
hearts
With tears, while they talked of blood;
And my lady who heard was resolving it all
In the call of the cuckoo, the song of the
fall.
But when, brave and sweet, from her maiden
bower
She issued again, they had done;
And the whole clan rose to the queen of the
feast.
And she faced them, and saw but one.
Till her thought was drawn to that vanished
shore
By the ghost of the dirge of Macrimmon Mdr
Faint as a traveling spirit of sound
It came and went on the breeze.