POEMS
COMPOSED OR SUGGESTED DURING A TOUR IN THE SUMMER OF 1833
XXVIII
CAVE OF STAFFA
WE saw, but surely, in the motley crowd,
Not One of us has felt the far-famed sight;
How 'could' we feel it? each the other's blight,
Hurried and hurrying, volatile and loud.
O for those motions only that invite
The Ghost of Fingal to his tuneful Cave
By the breeze entered, and wave after wave
Softly embosoming the timid light!
And by 'one' Votary who at will might stand
Gazing and take into his mind and heart,
With undistracted reverence, the effect
Of those proportions where the almighty hand
That made the worlds, the sovereign Architect,
Has deigned to work as if with human Art!
NOTE
Title: 'Cave of Staffa.'
The reader may be tempted to exclaim, "How came this and the two
following sonnets to be written, after the dissatisfaction
expressed in the preceding one?" In fact, at the risk of incurring
the reasonable displeasure of the master of the steamboat, I
returned to the cave, and explored it under circumstances more
favourable to those imaginative impressions which it is so
wonderfully fitted to make upon the mind.
