I.

But this "Ranoro"—Ranolf—who was he?—
Let us a brief while turn aside and see.

Sprung from a race of hardy mountaineers—
At the remote extreme of Britain's isle,
Where rugged capes confront the Arctic sky,
Now faint beneath the pale and tender smile
Of Summer's lingering light that sadly cheers;
Now through rent chasms of the storm-cloud's pile
Seen lurking lone in grim obscurity;
Where whirlpools boil, and eddying currents scar
The tides that sweeping from the Atlantic far
In finest season at their gentlest flow
Swarm up a thousand rocks, shoot high in air—
Columns of cloud a moment towering clear—
Then sink at once plumb-down and disappear,
While all the shining rocksides, black and bare,
Are streaked with skeiny streams of hurrying snow
Like stormers beaten back that headlong go;—
There was he born; did there his childhood puss
Mid wastes of purple moor and green morass.
page 21 His father, last of a long race decayed
Of pastoral chiefs, when all their land was gone
Had manlike set himself to humbler trade;
And something more than competence had made
From calcined kelp, and that free-splitting stone
Which in sea depths or silent cliffs, unknown
A thousand centuries, unquarried lay
Stored up and fashioning for the future beat
And ceaseless tramp of busy millions' feet
In that enormous World-Mart far away;
But most from fisheries, filling all the bays
With ruddy shifting sails in sun or haze,
When rippling loud, with myriad gleam and glance
And rustling shiver o'er its wide expanse.
The liquid mass of seething Ocean seemed
Quickened to silvery life that one way streamed.
Such sights and sounds inspired the growing Boy
With wondering exultation; and the joy
Of deeper thought and loftier feeling lent
To the mere gladness of temperament
But books and fancy and old fishers' tales
Of glorious climes beyond these mists and gales
Soon made the youngster restless—stirred his blood
With impulses resistless, such as drive
That insect-dragon scaly-winged to strive
And struggle through his chasmed channel's mud,
And reckless dash Into the splendour-flood,
The new wide pool of light he feels and sees;
Such longings, as, when Summer's searching heats
Find out the butterflies in their retreats.
They yearn with, till, unvexed by any breeze
The velvet-winged ones at her sweet command,
Sole, or in slow-revolving twos and threes
page 22 Float in a crimson flutter through the land.
Thus the Boy fevered till his sire's consent
He gained to gratify his natural bent
Towards sailor life, and follow o'er the main,
Although the favourite son, his brethren twain.
So from his schools, and tasks, and tutors free,
Away he went at twelve years old to Sea,