Homage to Sir Walter Scott
A few birches and oaks
still feathered the narrow ravines,
or occupied in dwarf-clusters
the hollow plains of the moor.
But these were gradually disappearing;
and a wide and waste country
lay before them, swelling
into bare hills of dark heath,
intersected by deep gullies;
being the passages by which
torrents forced their course in winter,
and during summer the disproportioned
channels for diminutive rivulets
that winded their puny way
among heaps of stones and gravel,
the effects and tokens of their winter fury—
like so many spendthrifts
dwindled down by the consequences
of former excesses and extravagance.
This desolate region seemed to extend
farther than the eye could reach,
without grandeur, without even
the dignity of mountain wildness,
yet striking, from the huge proportion
which it seemed to bear to such
more favoured spots of the country
as were adapted to cultivation,
and fitted for the support of man;
and thereby impressing irresistibly
the mind of the spectator
with a sense of the omnipotence
of nature, and the comparative
inefficacy of the boasted means
of amelioration which man is capable
of opposing to the disadvantages
of climate and soil.