Gerald Massey

Craigcrook Castle

A HAPPY island in a sea of green,
Smiling it lies beneath the azure heaven,
Well pleased, and conscious that each wave and wind
Is tempered kindly or with blessing rich;
And all the quaint cloud-messengers that come
Voyaging the blue glory’s summer sea
In barks of beauty, built o’er the powdery pearl,
Soft, shining, sumptuous, blown by languid breath,
Touch tenderly, or drop with ripeness down.
Spring builds her leafy nest for birds and flowers,
And folds it round luxuriant as the vine
Whose grapes are ripe with wine of merry cheer,
The Summer burns her richest incense there,
Swung from the censers of her thousand flowers;
Brown Autumn comes o’er seas of glorious gold;
And there old Winter keeps some greenth of heart,
When on his head the snows of age are white.

Mid glimpsing greenery at the hill-foot stands
The castle with its tiny town of towers:
A smiling martyr to the climbing strength
Of ivy that will crown the old bald head,
And roses that will mask him merry and young,
Like an old man with children round his knees.
With cups of color reeling roses rise
On walls and bushes, red and yellow and white;
A dance and dazzle of roses range all round.

The path runs down and peeps out in the lane
That loiters on by fields of wheat and bean,
Till the white-gleaming road winds city-ward.
Afar, in floods of sunshine blinding white,
The city lieth in its quiet pride,
With castled crown, looking on towns and shires,
And hills from which cloud-highlands climb the heavens:
A happy thing in glory smiles the Firth;
Its flowing azure winding like an arm
Around the warm waist of the yielding land.