Edinburgh, as described by Sir Walter Scott in "Marmion"

            

            Still on the spot Lord Marmion stay’d,

            For fairer scene he ne’er survey’d.

               When sated with the martial show

               That peopled all the plain below,

               The wandering eye could o’er it go,

               And mark the distant city glow

                  With gloomy splendour red;

               For on the smoke-wreaths, huge and slow,

               That round her sable turrets flow,

                  The morning beams were shed,

               And ting’d them with a lustre proud,

               Like that which streaks a thunder-cloud.

            Such dusky grandeur cloth’d the height,

            Where the huge Castle holds its state,

               And all the steep slope down,

            Whose ridgy back heaves to the sky,

            Pil’d deep and massy, close and high,

               Mine own romantic town!

            But northward far, with purer blaze,

            On Ochil mountains fell the rays,

            And as each heathy top they kiss’d

            It gleam’d a purple amethyst.

            Yonder the shores of Fife you saw;

            Here Preston Bay and Berwick Law:

               And broad between them roll’d,

            The gallant Frith the eye might note,

            Whose islands on its bosom float,

               Like emeralds chased in gold.