ANDREW Young the clergyman, as well as the naturalist and mountain-lover, speaks in this philosophical fragment.

It comes from Young's Selected Poems (Carcanet, £9.95).

VIEW FROM MOUNTAIN

When through the parting

mist,

That the sun's warm gold mouth had kissed,

The hills beneath me came to

view,

With lochans gleaming here and there,

It was not like the earth I knew;

Another world was shining

through,

As though that earth had worn

so thin

I saw the living spirit within,

Its beauty almost pain to bear

Waking in me the thought,

If heaven by act of death were

brought

Nearer than now, might I not die

Slain by my immortality?