As sable clouds at early day
Oft dim the shining skies,
So gloomy thoughts create dismay,
And lustre leaves her eyes.
"Ye powers! are Scotia's ample fields
With so much beauty grac'd,
To have those sweets your bounty yields
By foreign foes defac'd?
O Jove! at whose supreme command
The limpid fountains play,
O'er Caledonia's northern land
Let restless waters stray.
Since from the void creation rose,
Thou'st made a sacred vow,
That Caledon to foreign foes
Should ne'er be known to bow."
The mighty Thunderer on his sapphire throne,
In mercy's robes attir'd, heard the sweet voice
Of female woe,-soft as the moving song
Of Philomela 'midst the evening shades;
And thus return'd an answer to her prayers:
"Where birks at Nature's call arise; Where fragrance hails the vaulted skies; Where my own oak its umbrage spreads, Delightful 'midst the woody shades;
Where ivy mouldering rocks entwines;
Where breezes bend the lofty pines:
There shall the laughing Naiads stray,
'Midst the sweet banks of winding Tay."
From the dark womb of earth Tay's waters spring,
Ordain'd by Jove's unalterable voice;
The sounding lyre celestial muses string;
The choiring songsters in the groves rejoice.
Each fount its crystal fluids pours,
Which from surrounding mountains flow;
The river bathes its verdant shores;
Cool o'er the surf the breezes blow.
Let England's sons extol their gardens fair;
Scotland may freely boast her generous streams:
Their soil more fertile, and their milder air;
Her fishes sporting in the solar beams.
Thames, Humber, Severn, all must yield the bay To the pure streams of Forth, of Tweed, and Tay.
O Scotia! when such beauty claims
A mansion near thy flowing streams,
Ne'er shall stern Mars, in iron car,
Drive his proud coursers to the war;
But fairy forms shall strew around
Their olives on the peaceful ground;
And turtles join the warbling throng,
To usher in the morning song;
Or shout in chorus all the live-long day,
From the green banks of Forth, of Tweed, and Tay.
When gentle Phoebe's friendly light
In silver radiance clothes the night,
Still music's ever-varying strains
Shall tell the lovers Cynthia reigns;
And woo them to her midnight bowers,
Among the fragrant dew-clad flowers,
Where every rock, and hill, and dale,
With echoes greet the nightingale,
Whose pleasing, soft, pathetic tongue,
To kind condolence tunes the song;
And often wins the love-sick swain to stray,
To hear the tender variegated lay,
Through the dark woods of Forth, of Tweed, and
Tay.
Hail, native streams, and native groves!
Oozy caverns, green alcoves!
Retreats for Cytherea's reign,
With all the graces in her train.
Hail, Fancy! thou whose ray so bright
Dispels the glimmering taper's light!
Come in aerial vesture blue,
Ever pleasing, ever new;
In these recesses deign to dwell
With me in yonder moss-clad cell:
Then shall my reed successful tune the lay,
In numbers wildly warbling as they stray
Through the glad banks of Forth, of Tweed, and
TOWN AND COUNTRY CONTRASTED;
IN AN EPISTLE TO A FRIEND.
FROM noisy bustle, from contention free,
Far from the busy town I careless loll;
Not like swain Tityrus, or the bards of old,
Under a beechen, venerable shade,
But on a furzy heath, where blooming broom
And thorny whins the spacious plains adorn.
Here health sits smiling on my youthful brow:
For ere the sun beams forth his earliest ray,
And all the east with yellow radiance crowns;
Ere dame Aurora, from her purple bed,
'Gins with her kindling blush to paint the sky;
The soaring lark, morn's cheerful harbinger,
And linnet joyful, fluttering from the bush,
Stretch their small throats in vocal melody,
To hail the dawn, and drowsy sleep exhale
From man,
frail man! on downy softness stretch'd.
Such pleasing scenes Edina cannot boast;
For there, the slothful slumber seal'd mine eyes
Till nine successive strokes the clock had knell'd.
There, not the lark, but fish-wives' noisy screams,
And inundations plung'd from ten house height,
With smell more fragrant than the spicy groves
Of Indus, fraught with all her orient stores,
Rous'd me from sleep ;-not sweet refreshing sleep,
But sleep infested with the burning sting
Of bug infernal, who the live-long night
With direst suction sipp'd my liquid gore.
There, gloomy vapours in our zenith reign'd,
And fill'd with irksome pestilence the air.
There, lingering sickness held his feeble court,
Rejoicing in the havoc he had made;
And death, grim death! with all his ghastly train, Watch'd the broke slumbers of Edina's sons.
Hail, rosy health! thou pleasing antidote 'Gainst troubling cares! all hail, these rural fields, Those winding rivulets, and verdant shades, Where thou, the heaven-born goddess, deign'st to dwell!
With thee the hind, upon his simple fare,
Lives cheerful, and from Heaven no more demands.
But ah! how vast, how terrible the change
With him who night by night in sickness pines!
Him, nor his splendid equipage can please,
Nor all the pageantry the world can boast;
Nay, not the consolation of his friends
Can aught avail: his hours are anguish all;
Nor cease till envious death hath clos'd the scene.
But, Carlos, if we court this maid celestial;
Whether we through meandering rivers stray,
Or midst the city's jarring noise remain;
Let temperance, health's blithe concomitant,
To our desires and appetites set bounds;
Else, cloy'd at last, we surfeit every joy;
Our slacken'd nerves reject their wonted spring;
We reap the fruits of our unkindly lusts,
And feebly totter to the silent grave.
To what sequester'd gloomy shade
Hath ever gentle Pity stray'd?
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