One path closed and a new way begun for footfall with shoes and paws with claws and hoofs for deer and badger for humans and their dogs a way being marked in new outstretching arc. The tree in dying brings life to crumbling trunks and vanishing branches as the woodland extends and contracts breathing freely in the long sumptuous lichen that certificates the bark as reaching through fine fresh fecund air. One way is never just a different way to the same places as before, each way is a new line drawn and a fresh etched path that lasts and fails just as the fertile woodland creates as each sprouting and routing generates the ways we take and the ways we make.
The path seems less pursued now the tree fall has created an an obstacle. This woodland is in Rosslyn Glen below Roslin Village. A walk in nature and in beautifully untended once formal gardens near both Rosslyn Chapel and Castle.
© PHH Sykes 2024
phhsykes@gmail.com
The Lay of the Last Minstrel by Sir Walter Scott
Canto Sixth.
O'er Roslin all that dreary night
A wondrous blaze was seen to gleam;
'Twas broader than the watch-fire's light,
And redder than the bright moonbeam.
It glar'd on Roslin's castled rock,
It ruddied all the copse wood glen;
'Twas seen from Dryden's groves of oak
And seen from cavern'd Hawthorn-den.
Seem'd all on fire that chapel proud,
Where Roslin's chiefs uncoffin'd lie,
Each Baron, for a sable shroud,
Sheath'd in his iron panoply.
Seem'd all on fire within, around,
Deep sacristy and altar s pale;
Shone every plllar foliage bound,
And glimmer'd all the dead men's mail.
Blaz'd battlement and pinnet high,
Blaz'd every rose-carved buttress fair--
So still they blaze when fate is nigh
The lordly line of high St. Clair.
There are twenty of Roslin's barons bold
Lie buried within that proud chapelle;
Each one the holy vault doth hold--
But the sea holds lovely Rosabelle!
And each St. Clair was buried there,
With candle, with book, and with knell;
But the sea-caves rung, and the wild winds sung
The dirge of lovely Rosabelle.
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