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Stranger! this hillock of misshapen stones / Is not a ruin of the ancient time, / Nor, as perchance thou rashly deem'st, the Cairn / Of some old British Chief: 'tis nothing more / Than the rude embryo of a little Dome / Or Pleasure-house, once destined to be built / Among the birch-trees of this rocky isle.
But, as it chanced, Sir William having learned / That from the shore a full-grown man might wade, / And make himself a freeman of this spot / At any hour he chose, the Knight forthwith / Desisted, and the quarry and the mound / Are monuments of his unfinished task.