Ettrick Forest In November - Cnoc An Tursa

November’s sky is chill and drear,

November’s leaf is red and sear:

Late, gazing down the steepy linn,

That hems our little garden in,

Low in its dark and narrow glen

You scarce the rivulet might ken,

So thick the tangled greenwood grew,

So feeble trill’d the streamlet through:

Now, murmuring hoarse, and frequent seen

Through bush and brier, no longer green,

An angry brook, it sweeps the glade,

Brawls over rock and wild cascade,

And, foaming brown with doubled speed,

Hurries its waters to the Tweed.

No longer Autumn’s glowing red

Upon our Forest hills is shed;

No more beneath the evening beam

Fair Tweed reflects their purple gleam;

Away hath pass’d the heather-bell

That bloom’d so rich on Needpathfell;

Sallow his brow;

and russet bare

Are now the sister-heights of Yair.

The sheep, before the pinching heaven,

To shelter’d dale and down are driven,

Where yet some faded herbage pines,

And yet a watery sunbeam shines:

In meek despondency they eye

The wither’d sward and wintry sky,

And far beneath their summer hill,

Stray sadly by Glenkinnon’s rill:

The shepherd shifts his mantle’s fold,

And wraps him closer from the cold;

His dogs no merry circles wheel,

But shivering follow at his heel;

A cowering glance they often cast,

As deeper moans the gathering blast.