The Book of Scottish Song/The Scotsman's Farewell
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!