SCOTLAND

Wi' whatna joy I hailed them a'
The hilltaps standin' raw by raw,
The public house, the Hielan' birks,
And a' the bonny U. P. kirks!

Robert Louis Stevenson.

O Caledonia! stern and wild,

Meet nurse for a poetic child!

Land of brown heath and shaggy wood;
Land of the mountain and the flood.

Sir Walter Scott.

IF

F thou would'st view fair Melrose aright,
Go visit it by the pale moonlight;

For the gay beams of lightsome day
Gild, but to flout, the ruins gray.

When the broken arches are black in night,
And each shafted oriel glimmers white;
When the cold light's uncertain shower
Streams on the ruin'd central tower;
When buttress and buttress, alternately,
Seem framed of ebon and ivory;

When silver edges the imagery,

And the scrolls that teach thee to live and die;

When distant Tweed is heard to rave,

And the owlet to hoot o'er the dead man's grave,

Then go
but go alone the while
Then view St. David's ruined pile;
And, home returning, soothly swear,
Was never scene so sad and fair!

Sir Walter Scott.

Rosabelle

(Roslin Chapel)

LISTEN, listen, ladies gay!

No haughty feat of arms I tell;
Soft is the note, and sad the lay
That mourns the lovely Rosabelle.

"Moor, moor the barge, ye gallant crew!
And gentle ladye, deign to stay!
Rest thee in Castle Ravensheuch,
Nor tempt the stormy firth to-day.

"The blackening wave is edged with white;
To inch and rock the sea-mews fly;
The fishers have heard the Water-Sprite,
Whose screams forebode that wreck is nigh.

"Last night the gifted Seer did view

A wet shroud swathed round ladye gay; Then stay thee, Fair, in Ravensheuch; Why cross the gloomy firth to-day?"

'Tis not because Lord Lindesay's heir
To-night at Roslin leads the ball,
But that my ladye-mother there
Sits lonely in her castle-hall.

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"Tis not because the ring they ride,
And Lindesay at the ring rides well,
But that my sire the wine will chide
If 'tis not fill'd by Rosabelle."

- O'er Roslin all that dreary night A wondrous blaze was seen to gleam; 'Twas broader than the watch-fire's light, And redder than the bright moonbeam.

It glared on Roslin's castled rock,
It ruddied all the copse-wood glen;
'Twas seen from Dryden's groves of oak,
And seen from cavern'd Hawthornden.

Seem'd all on fire that chapel proud
Where Roslin's chiefs uncoffin'd lie,
Each Baron, for a sable shroud,
Sheathed in his iron panoply.

Seem'd all on fire within, around,
Deep sacristy and altar's pale;
Shone every pillar foliage-bound,
And glimmer'd all the dead men's mail.

Blazed battlement and pinnet high,
Blazed every rose-carved buttress fair
So still they blaze, when fate is nigh
The lordly line of high Saint Clair.

There are twenty of Roslin's barons bold Lie buried within that proud chapelle;

Each one the holy vault doth hold

But the sea holds lovely Rosabelle.