Wauken, ye breezes! row gently, ye billows! And waft my dear laddie ance mair to my arms! But oh, if he's faithless, and minds na his Nannie, Flow still between us, thou wide-roaring main! 15 May I never see it, may I never trow it, But, dying, believe that my Willie's my ain. MY NANNIE'S AWA'. Now in her green mantle blithe Nature arrays, And listens the lambkins that bleat o'er the braes, While birds warble welcomes in ilka green shaw; But to me it's delightless - my Nannie's awa'. 5 The snawdrap and primrose our woodlands adorn, Thou laverock that springs frae the dews o' the lawn, 10 The shepherd to warn o' the gray-breaking dawn; And thou mellow mavis that hails the night fa', Give over for pity - my Nannie's awa'. Come autumn, sae pensive, in yellow and gray, And soothe me with tidings o' Nature's decay: 15 The dark dreary winter and wild driving snaw Alane can delight me now Nannie's awa'! 11. wauken, waken. 3. ilka, every. 11. mavis, thrush. BONNIE DOON. YE flowery banks o' bonnie Doon, 5 Thou 'lt break my heart, thou bonnie bird, That sings upon the bough; 10 Thou minds me o' the happy days Thou 'lt break my heart, thou bonnie bird, That sings beside thy mate; For sae I sat, and sae I sang, And wistna o' my fate. Aft hae I roved by bonnie Doon, To see the woodbine twine, 15 And ilka bird sang o' its luve, And sae did I o' mine. 20 Wi' lightsome heart I pu'd a rose, And my fause luver staw the rose, 8. fause, false. 12. wistna, knew not. 19. staw, stole. MY HEART 'S IN THE HIGHLANDS. TUNE- Faille na Miosg. My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here; 5 Farewell to the Highlands, farewell to the North, The birthplace of valor, the country of worth; Wherever I wander, wherever I rove, The hills of the Highlands forever I love. Farewell to the mountains high covered with snow; 10 Farewell to the straths and green valleys below; Farewell to the forests and wild-hanging woods; Farewell to the torrents and loud-pouring floods. My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here; My heart's in the Highlands a-chasing the deer; 15 A-chasing the wild deer, and following the roe— My heart's in the Highlands wherever I go. CHARLES LAMB. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. IN reading English literature we notice that names of authors fall into groups. Thus we speak of the Elizabethan period, and Shakespeare, Spenser, Ben Jonson, Marlowe, Fletcher, Beaumont, and others occur to us; or the age of Queen Anne brings to mind Addison, Steele, Pope, Swift. Sometimes the writers of a period may have little to do with each other in a friendly way. Sometimes we think of them almost as much through their social relations as through their independent work. The period which extended from near the end of the last century to the close of the first third of this has a certain separateness, and as we get farther away from it we are likely to set it off in our minds. It was not so great a period as the Elizabethan; it had no such commanding genius as Shakespeare, but it was a period full of beginnings in literature, and it is very close to us in feeling, so that it will be long before it seems to be a past epoch. Now the interesting writers of that time were for the most part on very friendly terms with each other. When we read the lives, and the writings also, of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, Lamb, De Quincey, Hazlitt, and others, we trace in each the names and personalities of the rest. In the essays and the letters of Charles Lamb, for example, we are constantly running across references to Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, and Hazlitt, and thus we think of Lamb |
