Imagens das páginas
PDF
ePub

IV.

Thy daughters bright thy walks adorn!
Gay as the gilded summer sky,
Sweet as the dewy milk-white thorn,
Dear as the raptur'd thrill of joy!
Fair B-strikes th' adoring eye!
Heav'n's beauties on my fancy shine,
I see the sire of love on high,

And own ais work indeed divine!

V.

There, watching high the least alarms,
Thy rough rude fortress gleams afar;
Like some bold vet'ran, grey in arms,
And mark'd with many a seamy scar;
The pond'rous wall and massy bar,
Grim-rising o'er the rugged rock;
Have oft withstood assailing war,
And oft repell'd the invader's shock.

VI.

With awe-struck thought, and pitying tears,
I view that noble, stately dome,
Where Scotia's kings of other years,
Fam'd heroes, had their royal home:
Alas! how chang'd the time to come;
Their royal name low in the dust!
Their hapless race wild-wand'ring roam!
Tho' rigid law cries out, 'twas just!

VII.

Wild beats my heart to trace your steps,
Whose ancestors, in days of yore,
Thro' hostile ranks and ruin'd gaps,
Old Scotia's bloody lion bore:

Ev'n I who sing in rustic lore,
Haply my sires have left their shed,
And fac'd grim danger's loudest roar,
Bold-following where
your fathers led!

VIII.

Edina! Scotia's darling seat!

All hail thy palaces and tow'rs, Where once beneath a monarch's feet Sat legislation's sov'reign pow'rs! From marking wildly-scatter'd flow'rs, As on the banks of Ayr I stray'd, And singing, lone, the ling'ring hours, I shelter in thy honor'd shade.

BOOK V.

SONGS AND BALLADS.

A VISION.

As I stood by yon roofless tower,

Where the wa'-flower scents the dewy air, Where the howlet mourns in her ivy bower, And tells the midnight moon her care:

The winds were laid, the air was still,
The stars they shot alang the sky;
The fox was howling on the hill,
And the distant-echoing glens reply.

The stream, adown its hazelly path,
Was rushing by the ruin'd wa's,
Hasting to join the sweeping Nith,
Whase distant roaring swells and fa's.

The cauld blue north was streaming forth
Her lights, wi' hissing eerie din;
Athort the lift they start and shift,
Like Fortune's favors, tint as win.

By heedless chance I turn'd my eyes,
And, by the moon-beam, shook, to see
A stern and stalwart ghaist arise,
Attir'd as minstrels wont to be.

Had I a statue been o' stane,

His darin look had daunted me :
And on his bonnet grav'd was plain,
The sacred posy-Libertie!

And frae his harp sic strains did flow,
Might rous'd the slumbering dead to hear;
But oh' it was a tale of woe,

As ever met a Briton's ear!

He sang wi' joy his former day,

He, weeping, wail'd his latter times;
But what he said it was nae play,
I winna ventur't in my rhymes*.

The scenery so finely described in this poem taken from nature. The poet is suposed to be musing, by night, on the banks of the Cluden, near the ruins of Lincluden-abbey, of which some account is given in Pennant's Tour and Grose's Antiquities. It is to be regretted that he suppressed the song of Libertie. From the resources of his genius, and the grandeur and solemnity of the preparation, something might have been anticipated, equal, if not superior to the Address of Bruce to his Army, to the song of Death or to the fervid and noble description of the dying soldier in the field of battle.

« AnteriorContinuar »