Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

The echoes sleep on Cheviot's hills,
That heard the bugles blowing

When down their sides the crimson rills
With mingled blood were flowing;

The hunts where gallant hearts were game,
The slashing on the border,

The raid that swooped with sword and flame, Give place to "law and order."

Not while the rocking steeples reel
With midnight tocsins ringing,
Not while the crashing war-notes peal,

God sets his poets singing;
The bird is silent in the night,

Or shrieks a cry of warning

While fluttering round the beacon-light,But hear him greet the morning!

The lark of Scotia's morning sky!

Whose voice may sing his praises?
With Heaven's own sunlight in his eye,
He walked among the daisies,

Till through the cloud of fortune's wrong
He soared to fields of glory;

But left his land her sweetest song

And earth her saddest story.

'Tis not the forts the builder piles

That chain the earth together;

The wedded crowns, the sister isles,
Would laugh at such a tether;

The kindling thought, the throbbing words,
That set the pulses beating,
Are stronger than the myriad swords

Of mighty armies meeting.

Thus while within the banquet glows,
Without, the wild winds whistle,
We drink a triple health, — the Rose,
The Shamrock, and the Thistle!

[ocr errors]

Their blended hues shall never fade

Till War has hushed his cannon, Close-twined as ocean-currents braid

[ocr errors]

The Thames, the Clyde, the Shannon!

[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors]

Each glistening eye and flushing cheek
In light and flame repeating!

We come in one tumultuous tide,

One surge of wild emotion,

As crowding through the Frith of Clyde
Rolls in the Western Ocean;

As when yon cloudless, quartered moon
Hangs o'er each storied river,

The swelling breasts of Ayr and Doon
With sea-green wavelets quiver.

The century shrivels like a scroll,

The past becomes the present,

And face to face, and soul to soul,

We greet the monarch-peasant.

While Shenstone strained in feeble flights
With Corydon and Phillis, -

While Wolfe was climbing Abraham's heights
To snatch the Bourbon lilies, -

Who heard the wailing infant's cry,
The babe beneath the shieling,
Whose song to-night in every sky
Will shake earth's starry ceiling,

-

Whose passion-breathing voice ascends
And floats like incense o'er us,
Whose ringing lay of friendship blends
With labor's anvil chorus?

We love him, not for sweetest song,
Though never tone so tender;
We love him, even in his wrong,

His wasteful self-surrender.

138 FOR THE BURNS CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION.

We praise him, not for gifts divine,

His Muse was born of woman,

[ocr errors]

His manhood breathes in every line,

Was ever heart more human?

We love him, praise him, just for this:

In every form and feature,

Through wealth and want, through woe and bliss,

He saw his fellow-creature!

No soul could sink beneath his love,

Not even angel blasted;

No mortal power could soar above
The pride that all outlasted!

Ay! Heaven had set one living man
Beyond the pedant's tether,-
His virtues, frailties, HE may scan,
Who weighs them all together!

I fling my pebble on the cairn

Of him, though dead, undying;
Sweet Nature's nursling, bonniest bairn
Beneath her daisies lying.

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »