William Wordsworth

In the Sound of Mull

TRADITION, be thou mute! Oblivion, throw
Thy veil in mercy o’er the records, hung
Round strath and mountain, stamped by the ancient tongue
On rock and ruin, darkening as we go,—
Spots where a word, ghost-like, survives to show
What crimes from hate, or desperate love, have sprung;
From honor misconceived, or fancied wrong,
What feuds, not quenched but fed by mutual woe.
Yet, though a wild, vindictive race, untamed
By civil arts and labors of the pen,
Could gentleness be scorned by those fierce men,
Who, to spread wide the reverence they claimed
For patriarchal occupations, named
Yon towering peaks, “Shepherds of Etive Glen”?