at arose on "that
thrice-repeated cry" that quails all foes that madly rush against the
banners of Albyn. The storm that has frozen in his eyrie the eagle's
wing, driven the deer to the comb beneath the cliffs, and all night
imprisoned the wild-cat in his cell, hand-in-hand as is their wont when
crossing a stream or flood, bands of Highlanders now face in its
strongholds all over the ranges of mountains, come it from the wrathful
inland or the more wrathful sea.

"They think upon the ourie cattle
And silly sheep,"

and man's reason goes to the help of brute instinct.

How passing sweet is that other stanza, heard like a low hymn amidst the
noise of the tempest! Let our hearts once more recite it,--

"Ilk happing bird, wee, helpless thing,
That, in the merry months o' spring,
Delighted me to hear thee sing,
What comes o' thee?
Whar wilt thou cow'r thy chittering wing,
An' close thy ee?"

The whole earth is for a moment green again--trees whisper--streamlets
murmur--and the "merry month o' Spring" is musical through all her
groves. But in another moment we know that almost all those
sweet-singers are now dead--or that they "cow'r the chittering
wing"--never more to flutter through the woodlands, and "close the ee"
that shall never more be re-illumined with love, when the Season of
Nests is at hand, and bush, tree, and tower are again all a-twitter with
the survivors of some gentler climate.

The poet's heart, humanised to utmost tenderness by the beauty of its
own merciful thoughts, extends its pity to the poor beasts of prey. Each
syllable tells--each stroke of the poet-painter's pencil depicts the
life and sufferings of the wretched creatures. And then, feeling that at
such an hour all life is subject to one lot, how profound the pathos
reflected back upon our own selves and our mortal condition, by these
few simplest words,--

"My heart forgets,
While pitiless the tempest wild
Sore on you beats!"

They go to help the "ourie cattle" and the "silly sheep;" but who knows
that they are not _sent_ on an errand of higher mercy, by Him whose ear
has not been shut to the prayer almost frozen on the lips of them about
to perish!--an incident long forgotten, though on the eve of that day on
which the deliverance happened, so passionately did we all regard it,
that we felt that interference providential--as if we had indeed seen
the hand