He sung of Tay, of Forth and Clyde,
The hills and dales all round,
Of Leader-haughs and Leader side, -
O, how I blessed the sound!
Yet more delightful is the broom
So fair on Cowdenknows;
For sure so fresh, so bright a bloom
Elsewhere there never grows.
Not Teviot braes, so green and gay,
May with this broom compare;
Not Yarrow banks in flowery May,
Nor the bush aboon Traguair.
More pleasing far are Cowdenknows,
My peaceful happy home,
Where I was wont to milk my ewes,
At eve among the broom.
Ye powers that haunt the woods and plains
Where Tweed with Teviot flows,
Convey me to the best of swains,
And my loved Cowdenknows.
Craig Elachie.
CRAIG ELACHIE.
are the hills above the Spey,
The rocks are red that line his way;
Green is the strath his waters lave,
And fresh the turf upon the grave
Where sleep my sire and sisters three,
Where none are left to mourn for me:
Stand fast, stand fast, Craig Elachie!
The roofs that sheltered me and mine
Hold strangers of a Sassenach line;
Our hamlet thresholds ne'er can show
The friendly forms of long ago;
The rooks upon the old yew-tree
Would e'en have stranger notes to me:
Stand fast, stand fast, Craig Elachie!
The cattle feeding on the hills,
We tended once o'er moors and rills,
Like us have gone; the silly sheep
Now fleck the brown sides of the steep,
And southern eyes their watchers be,
And Gael and Sassenach ne'er agree:
Stand fast, stand fast, Craig Elachie!
Where are the elders of our glen,
Wise arbiters for meaner men?
Where are the sportsmen, keen of eye,
Who tracked the roe against the sky;
The quick of hand, of spirit free?
Passed, like a harper's melody:
Stand fast, stand fast, Craig Elachie!
Where are the maidens of our vale,
Those fair, frank daughters of the Gael?
Changed are they all, and changed the wife,
Who dared for love the Indian's life;
The little child she bore to me
Sunk in the vast Atlantic sea:
Stand fast, stand fast, Craig Elachie!
Bare are the moors of broad Strathspey,
Shaggy the western forests gray;
Wild is the corri's autumn roar,
Wilder the floods of this far shore;
Dark are the crags of rushing Dee,
Darker the shades of Tennessee:
Stand fast, stand fast, Craig Elachie!
Great rock, by which the Grant hath sworn,
Since first amid the mountains born;
Great rock, whose sterile granite heart
Knows not, like us, misfortune's smart,
The river sporting at thy knee,
On thy stern brow no change can see:
Stand fast, stand fast, Craig Elachie!
Stand fast on thine own Scottish ground,
By Scottish mountains flanked around,
Though we, uprooted, cast away
From the warm bosom of Strathspey,
Flung pining by this western sea,
The exile's hopeless lot must dree:
Stand fast, stand fast, Craig Elachie!
Yet strong as thou the Grant shall rise,
Cleft from his clansmen's sympathies;
In these grim wastes new homes we'll rear,
New scenes shall wear old names so dear;
And while our axes fell the tree,
Resound old Scotia's minstrelsy:
Stand fast, stand fast, Craig Elachie!
Here can no treacherous chief betray
For sordid gain our new Strathspey;
No fearful king, no statesmen pale,
Wrench the strong claymore from the Gael.
With armed wrist and kilted knee,
No prairie Indian half so free:
Stand fast, stand fast, Craig Elachie!
Craigcrook Castle.
CRAIGCROOK CASTLE.
HAPPY island in a sea of green,
Smiling it lies beneath the azure heaven,
Well pleased, and conscious that each wave and wind
Is tempered kindly or with blessing rich;
And all the quaint cloud-messengers that come
Voyaging the blue glory's summer sea
In barks of beauty, built o'er the powdery pearl,
Soft, shining, sumptuous, blown by languid breath,
Touch tenderly, or drop with ripeness down.
Spring builds her leafy nest for birds and flowers,
And folds it round luxuriant as the vine
Whose grapes are ripe with wine of merry cheer,
The Summer burns her richest incense there,
Swung from the censers of her thousand flowers; Brown Autumn comes o'er seas of glorious gold; And there old Winter keeps some greenth of heart, When on his head the snows of age are white.
Mid glimpsing greenery at the hill-foot stands
The castle with its tiny town of towers:
A smiling martyr to the climbing strength
Of ivy that will crown the old bald head,
And roses that will mask him merry and young,
Like an old man with children round his knees.
With cups of color reeling roses rise
On walls and bushes, red and yellow and white;
A dance and dazzle of roses range all round.
The path runs down and peeps out in the lane
That loiters on by fields of wheat and bean,
Till the white-gleaming road winds city-ward.
Afar, in floods of sunshine blinding white,
The city lieth in its quiet pride,
With castled crown, looking on towns and shires,
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