Here haply too, at vernal dawn,
     Some musing bard may stray,
     And eye the smoking, dewy lawn,
     And misty mountain grey;
     Or, by the reaper’s nightly beam,
     Mild-chequering thro’ the trees,
     Rave to my darkly dashing stream,
     Hoarse-swelling on the breeze.

     Let lofty firs, and ashes cool,
     My lowly banks o’erspread,
     And view, deep-bending in the pool,
     Their shadow’s wat’ry bed: 
     Let fragrant birks, in woodbines drest,
     My craggy cliffs adorn;
     And, for the little songster’s nest,
     The close embow’ring thorn.

     So may old Scotia’s darling hope,
     Your little angel band
     Spring, like their fathers, up to prop
     Their honour’d native land! 
     So may, thro’ Albion’s farthest ken,
     To social-flowing glasses,
     The grace be—­“Athole’s honest men,
     And Athole’s bonie lasses!

Lines On The Fall Of Fyers Near Loch-Ness.

     Written with a Pencil on the Spot.

     Among the heathy hills and ragged woods
     The roaring Fyers pours his mossy floods;
     Till full he dashes on the rocky mounds,
     Where, thro’ a shapeless breach, his stream resounds. 
     As high in air the bursting torrents flow,
     As deep recoiling surges foam below,
     Prone down the rock the whitening sheet descends,
     And viewles Echo’s ear, astonished, rends. 
     Dim-seen, through rising mists and ceaseless show’rs,
     The hoary cavern, wide surrounding lours: 
     Still thro’ the gap the struggling river toils,
     And still, below, the horrid cauldron boils—­

Epigram On Parting With A Kind Host In The Highlands

     When Death’s dark stream I ferry o’er,
     A time that surely shall come,
     In Heav’n itself I’ll ask no more,
     Than just a Highland welcome.

Strathallan’s Lament^1

     Thickest night, o’erhang my dwelling! 
     Howling tempests, o’er me rave! 
     Turbid torrents, wintry swelling,
     Roaring by my lonely cave!

[Footnote 1:  Burns confesses that his Jacobtism was merely sentimental “except when my passions were heated by some accidental cause,” and a tour through the country where Montrose, Claverhouse, and Prince Charles had fought, was cause enough.  Strathallan fell gloriously at Culloden.—­Lang.]

     Crystal streamlets gently flowing,
     Busy haunts of base mankind,
     Western breezes softly blowing,
     Suit not my distracted mind.

     In the cause of Right engaged,
     Wrongs injurious to redress,
     Honour’s war we strongly waged,
     But the Heavens denied success. 
     Ruin’s wheel has driven o’er us,
     Not a hope that dare attend,
     The wide world is all before us—­
     But a world without a friend.