Many a banner spread, flutters above your head,
Many a crest that is famous in story,
Mount and make ready then, sons of the mountain glen,
Fight for your Queen and the old Scottish glory.
Come from the hills where your hirsels are grazing,
Come from the glen of the buck and the roe:
Come to the crag where the beacon is blazing;
Come with the buckler, the lance, and the bow.
Trumpets are sounding, war-steeds are bounding;
Stand to your arms, and march in good order;
England shall many a day tell of the bloody fray,
When the blue bonnets came over the border.
Ah, Chloris.
[This elegant lyric appears in the Tea-Table Miscellany, headed Gilderoy, that being the tune to which it is adapted. It has also been copied into most other Scottish collections of songs, and ascribed to President Forbes of Culloden. Mr. Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, however, has recently discovered it to belong to Sir Charley's Sedley's play of the Mulberry Tree, which was printed in 1675, before President Forbes was born. It can therefore no longer be admitted with propriety into any Scottish collection, and is only reprinted here for the purpose of correcting a long established error.]
Ah, Chloris! could I now but sit
As unconcern'd, as when
Your infant beauty could beget
No happiness or pain!
When I this dawning did admire,
And praised the coming day,
I little thought that rising fire
Would take my rest away.
Your charms in harmless childhood lay,
As metals in a mine;
Age from no face takes more away
Than youth conceal'd in thine:
But as your charms insensibly
To their perfection press'd,
So love, as unperceived, did fly,
And centre in my breast.
My passion with your beauty grew,
While Cupid, at my heart,
Still, as his mother favoured you,
Threw a new flaming dart.
Each gloried in their wanton part,
To make a lover, he
Employ'd the utmost of his art;—
To make a beauty, she.
The Soldier's Grave.
[This first appeared in a small volume of poems by J. Fraser, Edinburgh, published about 1818. It was quoted in the Scotsman newspaper, and became generally popular.]
Dear land of my birth, of my friends, of my love,
Shall I never again climb thy mountains:
Nor wander at eve through some lone leafy grove,
To list to the dash of thy fountains?
Shall no hand that I love close my faint beaming eye,
That darkens 'mid warfare and danger?
Ah, no! for I feel that my last heaving sigh
Must fleet on the gale of the stranger.
Then farewell, ye valleys, ye fresh blooming bow'rs,
Of childhood the once happy dwelling;
No more in your haunts shall I chase the gay hours
For death at my bosom is knelling.
But proudly the lotus shall bloom o'er my grave,
And mark where a freeman is sleeping,
And my dirge shall be heard in the Nile's dashing wave,
While the Arab his night watch is keeping.
'Twas a soldier who spoke—but his voice now is gone,
And lowly the hero is lying;
No sound meets the ear, save the crocodile's moan,
Or the breeze through the palm-tree sighing.
But lone though he rests where the camel is seen,
By the wilderness heavily pacing;
His grave in our bosoms shall ever be green,
And his monument ne'er know defacing.
The Minstrel Sleeps.
[Written on the death of Sir Walter Scott, by Robert Gilfillan. Set to Music by Finlay Dun.]
The Minstrel sleeps! the charm is o'er,
The bowl beside the fount is broken,
And we shall hear that harp no more
Whose tones to every land hath spoken!
