But when the full Atlantic gale sweeps over the land, and the rain-clouds rush in swift procession across the half-hidden hills, the moaning and shrieking of the storm come like sounds from another world. We seem to hear the tread, and almost to see the forms, of the ghosts of the Ossianic heroes.
Chasing spectre-boars of mist
On wings of great winds on the cairn.
When bursts the cloud in Cona of the glens,
A thousand spirits wildly shriek
On the waste wind that sweeps around the cairn.
Nor is the turmoil of the tempest on the sea less vividly depicted. We are shown the
Waves surging onward in mist,
When their crests are seen in foam
Over smoke and haze widespread.
In the midst of the gloom we descry a shore-stack against which the ocean
Dashes the force of billows cold;
White spray is high around its throat,
And cairns resound on the heathery steep.
With these pictures of tumult on land and sea, there come glimpses of those cherished interludes of bright sunshine, when the western hills and firths are seen at their loveliest. But whether radiant or gloomy the landscape is in unison with the human emotion described—
Pleasing the tale of the time which has gone;
Soothing as noiseless dew of morning mild,
On the brake and knoll of roes,
When slowly rises the sun
