Impelled to the pursuit, by gold and by vengeance,
My foemen are swift as the storm-driven rack;
From the fierce brutal tribes they've selected their engines,
The beagles and blood-hounds are scenting my tract.
Farewell to thee, Scotland, thy hills are receding,
So beagles and blood-hounds can track as they may;
But my heart to its centre is wounded and bleeding,
For thousands who fell on Culloden's dark day.
The hill-fox's howl, and the lone widow's wailings,
Commingle at midnight, 'midst tempest and rain;
And the red mountain-streamlets by smouldering shellings,
Brawl hoarsely and fiercely the dirge of the slain.
The chieftains and heroes who followed my banner
Are pining in dungeons, and bleaching on walls;
Or, stripp'd of their all, saving conscience and honour,
The grass growing rank on their hearths and their halls,
Farewell to thee, Scotland, thy loftiest mountain
Is fading and blending with ocean and sky,
I groan—for my tears are dried up at the fountain—
A wanderer I've lived, and an exile I'll die.
The Scotsman's Farewell.
[John Burns.]
Let me gaze on those mountains, with heath overgrown,
'Mid whose wild flowers I sported, ere sorrow I knew;
Let me leave them one tear, ere my bark shall be thrown
O'er the wave that may hide them for ever from view!
Though I go to a land as enchanting and fair—
That has comforts as many, and troubles as few—
Where the heart, all it pants for, as freely may share,
And find its attachments as tender and true—
Yet the place of our birth, like our earliest love,
To the throb of affection must ever be dear;—
And kind, or severe, as our fortune may prove,
We look back on that spot—with a smile—or a tear
Oh yes! there's no loadstone that equals our home,
Nor magnet so true as the pulse of the heart:—
And the mem'ry of boyhood, where'er we may roam,
Sheds a ray o'er the mind that will never depart.
Farewell, Caledonia! thou first in contending
Against the oppressors of freedom and truth—
May I fall like my fathers—thy blessings defending—
And sleep 'neath the turf I have trod in my youth!
