Sport the lang summer day
On the braes o' Balquhither.
I will twine thee a bower
By the clear siller fountain,
And I'll cover it o'er
Wi' the flowers of the mountain;
I will range through the wilds,
And the deep glens sae drearie,
And return wi' the spoils
To the bower o' my dearie.
When the rude wintry win'
Idly raves round our dwelling, And the roar of the linn
On the night breeze is swelling, So merrily we'll sing,
As the storm rattles o'er us, Till the dear shieling ring
Wi' the light lilting chorus.
Now the summer's in prime
Wi' the flowers richly blooming,
And the wild mountain thyme
A' the moorlands perfuming;
To our dear native scenes
Let us journey together,
Where glad innocence reigns
'Mang the braes o' Balquhither.
ROBERT BRUCE'S ADDRESS TO HIS ARMY.
COTS, wha hae wi' Wallace bled;
Scots, wham Bruce has aften led; Welcome to your gory bed,
See the front o' battle lower;
See approach proud Edward's power: Chains and slaverie!
Wha will be a traitor knave?
Wha can fill a coward's grave?
Wha sae base as be a slave?
Let him turn and flee!
Wha for Scotland's king and law
Freedom's sword will strongly draw,
Freeman stand, or freeman fa'?
Let him follow me!
By oppression's woes and pains!
By your sons in servile chains!
We will drain our dearest veins,
But they shall be free!
Lay the proud usurpers low!
Tyrants fall in every foe!
Liberty's in every blow!
Let us do, or die!
streams that down the valley run,
Or through the meadow glide,
Or glitter to the summer sun,
The Stinshar is the pride.
"T is not his banks of verdant hue,
Though famed they be asar;
Nor grassy hill, nor mountain blue,
Nor flower bedropt with diamond dew;
'Tis she that chiefly charms the view,
The bonnie lass of Barr.
When rose the lark on early wing,
The vernal tide to hail;
When daisies decked the breast of spring,
I sought her native vale.
The beam that gilds the evening sky,
And brighter morning star
That tells the king of day is nigh,
With mimic splendor vainly try
To reach the lustre of thine eye,
Thou bonnie lass of Barr.
The sun behind yon misty isle
Did sweetly set yestreen,
But not his parting dewy smile
Could match the smile of Jean.
Her bosom swelled with gentle woe,
Mine strove with tender war.
On Stinshar's banks, while wildwoods grow,
While rivers to the ocean flow,
With love of thee my heart shall glow,
Thou bonnie lass of Barr.
MIGHTY mass majestic, from the roots
Of the old sea thou risest to the sky,
In thy wild, bare sublimity alone.
All-glorious was the prospect from thy peak,
Thou thunder-cloven Island of the Forth!
Landward Tantallon lay, with ruined walls
Sepulchral, — like a giant in old age,
Smote by the blackening lightning-flash, and left
A prostrate corpse upon the sounding shore!
Behind arose your congregated woods,
Leuchie, Balgone, and Rockville, fairer none.
Remoter, mingling with the arch of heaven,
Blue Cheviot told where, stretching by his feet,
Bloomed the fair valleys of Northumberland.
Seaward the Forth, a glowing green expanse,
Studded with many a white and gliding sail,
Winded its serpent form, - the Ochils rich
Down gazing in its mirror; while beyond
The Grampians reared their bare, untrodden scalps;
Fife showed her range of scattery coast-towns old
Old as the days of Scotland's early kings,
Malcolm and Alexander and the Bruce -
From western Dysart to the dwindling point.
Of famed and far St. Andrews; all beyond
Was ocean's billowy and unbounded waste,
Sole broken by the verdant islet May,
Whose fitful lights, amid surrounding gloom,
When midnight mantles earth and sea and sky,
From danger warns the home-bound mariner;
And one black speck a distant sail - which told
Where mingled with its line the horizon blue.
Who were thy visitants, lone Rock, since man
Shrank from thy sea-flower solitudes, and left
His crumbling ruins mid thy barren shelves?
Up came the cormorant, with dusky wing,
From northern Orkney, an adventurous flight,
Floating far o'er us in the liquid blue,
While many a hundred fathom in the sheer
Abyss below, where foamed the surge unheard,
Dwindled by distance, flocks of mighty fowl
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