Heroes Not Zombies

It’s Burns Night tonight, but I’d like to share the opening verse of a poem by another old Scottish poet, Thomas Campbell. From his, ‘The Pleasures of Hope’…..

At summer eve, when Heav’n’s ethereal bow
Spans with bright arch the glittering hills below,
Why to yon mountain turns the musing eye,
Whose sunbright summit mingles with the sky?
Why do those cliffs of shadowy tint appear
More sweet than all the landscape smiling near?—
‘Tis Distance lends enchantment to the view,
And robes the mountain in its azure hue.

Although this turns around the French idea of the “view from on high“, in some ways, it’s the same idea. How often does it seem that it’s the distant mountains which catch our eye when we look at a landscape? I know that’s what catches my eye first. Every single day I look out of one of the windows of my flat and look for Ben Ledi. Unless there is mist, or the clouds have come down in front of it, it’s Ben Ledi I see first.

I like this idea of Campbell’s that the ‘distance lends enchantment to the view’, and I think our everyday often lacks enchantment, so maybe here’s an easy way to increase it…..look to hills, folks!