5. No one doubted, no one could doubt, that she would soon be dashed to pieces. But have not people who walk in their sleep, obedient to the mysterious guidance of dreams, climbed the walls of old ruins, and found footing, even in decrepitude, along the edge of unguarded battlements, and down +dilapidated staircases, deep as draw-wells or coal-pits, and returned with open, fixed, and unseeing eyes, unharmed to their beds, at midnight! It is all the work of the soul, to whom the body is a slave; and shall not the agony of a mother's passion, who sees her baby whose warm mouth had just left her breast, hurried off by a demon to a hideous death, bear her limbs aloft wherever there is dust to dust, till she reach that devouring den, and fiercer and more furious far, in the passion of love, than any bird of prey that ever bathed its beak in blood, throttle the fiends, that with their heavy wings would fain flap her down the cliffs, and hold up her child in deliverance before the eye of the all-seeing God! 6. No stop no stay,—she knew not that she drew her breath. Beneath her feet, providence fastened every loose stone, and to her hands strengthened every root. How was she ever to descend? That fear but once crossed her heart, as she went up-up-upto the little image of her own flesh and blood. The God who holds me now from perishing, will not the same God save me when my child is on my bosom?" Down came the fierce rushing of the eagles' wings; each savage bird dashing close to her head, so that she saw the yellow of their wrathful eyes. All at once, they +quailed and were cowed. Yelling, they flew off to the stump of an ash jutting out of a cliff, a thousand feet above the cataract; and the christian mother falling across the aerie, in the midst of bones and blood, clasped her child- dead - dead - dead doubt but unmangled and untorn, and swaddled up just as it was when she laid it down asleep among the fresh hay, in a nook of the harvest field. no 7. Oh! what a pang of perfect blessedness transfixed her heart from that faint, feeble cry,- "It livesit lives - it lives!" and baring her bosom, with loud laughter and eyes dry as stones, she felt the lips of the unconscious innocent, once more murmuring at the fount of life and love! "O thou great and thou dreadful God! whither hast thou brought me, one of the most sinful of thy creatures? Oh! save my soul, lest it perish, even for thy own name's sake! Oh thou, who diedst to save sinners, have mercy upon me!" + 8. Below, were cliffs, chasms, blocks of stone, and the skeletons of old trees-far-far down-and +dwindled into specks, and a thousand creatures of her own kind, stationary, or running to and fro! Was that the sound of the waterfall, or the faint roar of voices? Is that her native strath? and that tuft of trees, does it contain the hut, in which stands the cradle of her child? Never more shall it be rocked by her foot! Here must she die; and, when her breast is exhausted, her baby too! And those horrid beaks, and eyes, and talons, and wings, will return, and her child will be devoured at last, even within the dead bosom that can protect it no more. WILSON. 1. WHERE, all this time, was Mark Steuart, the sailor? Half way up the cliffs. But his eye had got dim, and his heart sick; and he, who had so often reefed the top-gallant sail, when, at midnight, the coming of the gale was heard afar, covered his face with his hands, and dared look no longer on the swimming hights. "And who will take care of my poor, bed-ridden mother?" thought Hannah, whose soul, through the exhaustion of so many passions, could no more retain in its grasp that hope, which it had +clutched in despair. A voice whispered "God." She looked around, expecting to see an angel, but nothing moved, except a rotten branch, that, under its own weight, broke off from the crumbling rock. Her eye, by some secret sympathy of her soul with the inanimate object, watched its fall; and it seemed to stop not far off, on a small platform. 2. Her child was bound within her bosom-she remembered not how or when,- but it was safe-and, scarcely daring to open her eyes, she slid down the shelving rocks, and found herself on a small piece of firm, root-bound soil, with the tops of bushes appearing below. With fingers suddenly strengthened into the power of iron, she swung herself down, by briar, and broom, and +heather, and dwarf-birch. There, a loosened stone leaped over a ledge, and no sound was heard, so profound was its fall. There, the shingle rattled down the screes,* and she hesitated not to follow. Her feet bounded against the huge stone that stopped them, but she felt no pain. Her body was callous as the cliff. Steep, as the upright wall of a house, was now the side of the precipice. But it was matted with ivy, centuries old, long ago dead, and without a single green leaf, but with thousands of arm-thick stems, * petrified into the rock, and covering it, as with a trellis. She Precipices. bound her baby to her neck, and, with hands and feet, clung to that fearful ladder. 3. Turning round her head and looking down, lo! the whole population of the parish-so great was the multitudeon their knees! and, hush the voice of psalms! a hymn, breathing the spirit of one united prayer! Sad and solemn was the strain, but nothing dirge-like, breathing not of death, but deliverance. Óften had she sung that tune, perhaps the very words, but them she heard not-in her own hut, she and her mother; or, in the kirk, along with the congregation. An unseen hand seemed fastening her fingers to the ribs of ivy; and, in sudden +inspiration, believing that her life was to be saved, she became almost as fearless as if she had been changed into a winged creature. Again her feet touched stones and earth, the psalm was hushed, but a tremulous, sobbing voice was close beside her, and, lo! a she-goat, with two little kids, at her feet! "Wild hights," thought she, "do these creatures climb, but the dam will lead down her kid by the easiest paths; for, oh! even in the brute creatures, what is the holy power of a mother's love!" and, turning round her head, she kissed her sleeping baby, and, for the first time, she wept. + 4. Overhead, frowned the front of the precipice, never before touched by human hand or foot. No one had ever dreamed of *scaling it, and the golden eagles knew that well in their instinct, as, before they built their aerie, they had brushed it with their wings. But all the rest of this part of the mountain-side, though +scarred, and seamed, and tchasmed, was yet accessible; and more than one person in the parish had reached the bottom of the Glead's Cliff. Many were now attempting it; and, ere the cautious mother had followed her dumb guides a hundred yards, though among dangers, that, although enough to terrify the stoutest heart, were traversed by her without a shudder, the head of one man appeared, and then the head of another; and she knew that God had delivered her and her child, in safety, into the care of their fellow creatures. 5. Not a word was spoken, eyes said enough, she hushed her friends with her hands, and, with uplifted eyes, pointed to the guides lent to her by Heaven. Small, green plats, where those creatures nibble the wild flowers, became now more frequent; trodden lines, almost as easy as sheep-paths, showed that the dam had not led her young into danger; and now, the brushwood dwindled away into straggling shrubs, and the party stood on a little eminence above the stream, and forming part of the strath. 6. There had been trouble and agitation, much sobbing, and many tears, among the multitude, while the mother was scaling the cliffs; sublime was the shout that echoed afar, the moment she reached the aerie; then, had succeeded a silence, deep as death; in a little while, arose that hymning prayer, succeeded by mute supplication; the wildness of thankful and congratulatory joy, had next its sway; and now, that her salvation was sure, the great crowd rustled like a wind-swept wood. And for whose sake was all this alternation of agony? A poor, humble creature, unknown to many, even by name; one who had but few friends, nor wished for more; contented to work all day, here, there, any where, that she might be able to support her aged mother, and her little child; and who, on Sabbath, took her seat in an obscure pew, set apart for *paupers, in the kirk! 7. “Fall back, and give her fresh air," said the old minister of the parish; and the circle of close faces widened around her, lying as in death. "Give me the bonnie bit bairn into my arms,' cried first one mother, and then another; and it was tenderly handed around the circle of kisses, many of the snooded maidens bathing its face in tears. "There's na a scratch about the puir innocent, for the eagle you see maun* hae stuck its talons into the lang claes, and the shawl. Blin', blin', maun they be, who see not the finger o' God in this thing!" 8. Hannah started up from her swoon, and, looking wildly around, cried, "Oh! the bird! the bird! the eagle! the eagle! the eagle has carried off my bonnie wee Walter! is there nane to pursue?" A neighbor put her baby to her breast, and, shutting her eyes, and smiting her forehead, the sorely bewildered creature said, in a low voice, "Am I wauken? oh! tell me if I'm wauken? or if a' this be the wark o' a fever, and the delirium o' a dream?” WILSON. It is a desolate eve; Dim, cheerless is the scene my path around; + Patters the rain; the breeze-stirred forests grieve; With vigorous talons clinched, and bright eyes shut, Preserving yet, in look, thy tameless mood, As if, though stilled by death, thy heart were unsubdued. Must. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. How cam'st thou to thy death? path, Did scythe-winged lightning flash *athwart thy brain, And drive thee from thy elevation proud, Down whirling, lifeless, to the dim-seen plain? I know not, may not guess; but here alone Lifeless thou liest, outstretched beside the desert stone. A proud life hath been thine : High on the herbless rock, thou 'wok'st to birth, And, gazing down, saw far beneath thee shine Outstretched, horizon-girt, the map-like earth. What rapture must have gushed Warm round thy heart, when first thy wings tessayed, Adventurously, their heavenward flight, and rushed Up toward day's blazing eye-star, undismayed, Above thee, space's vacancy unfurled, And, far receding down, the dim, material world! How fast, how far, how long, Thine hath it been, from cloud-vailed aerie high To swoop, and still the woodlark's lyric song, The leveret's gambols, and the lambkin's cry? The terror-stricken dove +Cowered down amid the oak-wood's central shade; While +ferny glens below, and cliffs above, To thy fierce shriek, tresponsive echo made, Carrying the wild alarm from vale to vale, That thou, the forest king, wert out upon the gale! When wooded glens were dark, And o'er moist earth, glowed morning's rosy star, High o'er the scarce tinged clouds, 't was thine to mark The orient chariot of the sun afar: And oh! how grand to soar Beneath the full moon, on full pinion driven; To pierce the regions of gray cloud-land o'er, And drift amid the star-isled seas of heaven! Even like a courier, sent from earth to hold With space-dissevered worlds, unawed, communion bold. Dead king-bird of the waste! And is thy curbless span of freedom o'er? While soaring o'er the stream-girt vales, thy form, Lessening, commingles with the azure sky, Glimpsed 'mid the masses of the gathering storm, As if it were thy proud resolve to see, Betwixt thee and dim earth, the zig-zag lightnings flee! |