Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Scotland: Vols. VI–VIII. 1876–79.
Dunoon
By Thomas Lyle (1792–1859)S
From a beam of the rising moon,
On the heathy shore at evening fall,
’Twixt Holy-Loch and dark Dunoon;
Her fairy lamp’s pale silvery glare,
From the dew-clad moorland flower,
Invites my wandering footsteps there,
At the lonely twilight hour.
Bids my lone steps seek the shore,
There the rush of the flow-tide’s rippling wave
Meets the dash of the fisher’s oar;
And the dim-seen steamboat’s hollow sound,
As she seaward tracks her way;
All else are asleep in the still calm night,
And robed in the misty gray.
And the night breeze sweeps the hill,
It ’s sweet, on thy rock-bound shores, Dunoon,
To wander at fancy’s will.
Eliza! with thee, in this solitude,
Life’s cares would pass away,
Like the fleecy clouds over gray Kilmun,
At the wake of early day.