Series 1 > Grameid: an heroic poem descriptive of the campaign of Viscount Dundee in 1689, and other pieces

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SCOTI GRAMEIDOS LIB. III.
81
Continuo exclamant; heu nunc quibus orbis in oris
Ignotis fato advehimur, tepidoque remotis
Sedibus axe procul gelidas erramus ad arctos,
Dumosos inter scopulos et inhospita tesqua.
Inter et horrentes aeterno frigore cautes,
Riphaeis ubi cuncta rigent damnata pruinis,
Horriferoque gelu; meta est certe ultima longe
Abria terrarum, quascunque liquentibus ulnis
Astrorum nutrix amplectitur1 Amphitrite.
Jam quibus in terris infandos sistere cursus ?
Aut ubi in exhaustos dabitur superare labores ?
Sauromatumne ultra montes, ultraque Niphatem
Tendimus algentem, et rigidi juga nimguida Tauri ?
Jam certe extremis terrarum insedimus oris,
Orbis et arctoi fines,2 spatia ultima mundi
Emensi, terras longinqua sede repostas
f Alas ! ’ they cry, f to what unknown land has our fate carried
us, to what ungenial clime ? ’ Mid wood and rock and desert we
wander, in regions of eternal snow, where Russian winter holds all
things in its icy grasp. Lochaber, surely, is the extremity of that
earth, which Amphitrite, nurse3 of the stars, holds in her watery
bosom. When and where shall these labours cease, this unfortunate
journey end ? Is our march directed beyond the Sarmatian moun¬
tains,4 or the Niphates, or Taurus ? We have surely come to the
limits of the North, and to those islands where indomitable races
Thin cottages the unequall fields adorn,
O’erspread with briars, and rough with prickly thorn ;
With warring winds and storms the air is toss’d,
And the ground hardened with perpetual frost!
A desart wild, impatient of the plough,
Where nought but thistles, shrubs, and bushes grow,
And barren heath : and on the mountains high
Deep snow in frozen beds afflicts the eye ;
While streams benumbed with cold forget to flow,
Stiffen in ice, and into solid grow ! ’
Memoirs of Lochiel, p. 239.
1 For scanning of this verse cf. page 89, verse 180 and note.
1 Var. lect. finis.
3 This poetical expression I have not met with elsewhere. Whether we
regard the stars as rising from the sea, or embosomed by reflection on its surface,
the idea of ‘ nutrix astrorum ’ is pretty.
4 Carpathian Mountains, or perhaps he means Caucasus. The Niphates—
snow mountains—an eastward prolongation of the Taurus.