“Ern” (MS I; Poems [1891]; Works [1903])—the River Earn. For crossing the Earn when departing Perth and traveling south, see Glenfarg (place).

I quickly end—W. G. Collingwood revised the final line in order to repair the rhyme with the previous line, “In short such changes Scotland does now take”, by inventing a new ending:
“That I canʼt tell them, and an end I make”.

What is additionally interesting about Ruskinʼs original ending, besides the unrhymed couplet, is the crowding of these final lines on the page, as if he was rushed or had miscalculated. Ruskin squeezed the last three poetic lines, including their respective runover lines, into three ruled lines of the notebook, whereas earlier he allowed separate ruled lines not only to each line of poetry but also to its runover. In fact, the final runover line is crowded onto the ruled line that also contains the heading for the following poem, “poem III” (i.e., “The Defiance of War”). Perhaps Ruskin started “poem III” before he had finished “On Scotland.”