Volume Iii Part 34 (2/2)

IV.

There shall pasture the ewes, There the spotted goats browse, And the kids shall arouse In their madness of play; They shall b.u.t.t, they shall fight, They shall emulate flight, They shall break with delight O'er the mountains away.

And there shall my Mary With her faithful one tarry, And never be weary In the hollows to stray.

V.

While a concert shall cheer us, For the bushes are near us; And the birds shall not fear us, We 'll harbour so still.

Strains the mavis his throat, Lends the cuckoo her note, And the world is forgot By the side of the hill.

THE CELT AND THE STRANGER.

The dawn it is breaking; but lonesome and eerie Is the hour of my waking, afar from the glen.[50]

Alas! that I ever came a wanderer hither, Where the tongue of the stranger is racking my brain!

Cleft in twain is my heart, all my pleasure betraying; The half is behind, but the better is straying The shade of the hills and the copses away in, And the truant I call to the Lowlands in vain.

I know why it wanders,--it is to be treading Where long I frequented the haunts of my dear, The meadow so dewy, the glades so o'erspreading, With the gowans to lean on, the mavis to cheer.

It is to be tending where heifers are wending, And the birds, with the music of love, are contending; And rapture, its pa.s.sion to innocence lending, Is a dance in my soul, and a song in my ear.

[50] This song was written in Edinburgh.

CORMAC'S CURE.

The following is a portion of the poet's ”Lament for his Lost Love,” on her departure to England with her husband. Cormac, an Irish harper, was long entertained in his professional character by Macleod of Lewis; and had the temerity to make love to the chief's daughter.

On the discovery, and its apprehended consequences to his safety, he is said to have formed the desperate resolution of slaying the father, and carrying away the lady. His hand was stayed, as he raised the deadly weapon, by the sudden appearance of Macleod's son; who, with rare and commendable temper, advised him to look for a love among the hundred maidens of his own degree who were possessed of equal charms. With the same uncommon self-command, poor Cormac formed the resolution of drowning his love in the swell of his own music. Ross applies the story to his own case.

Thus sung the minstrel Cormac, his anguish to beguile, And laid his hand upon his harp, and struck the strings the while-- ”Since they have taught my lady fair on her poet's gifts to frown, In deeper swellings of the lay, I 'll learn my love to drown.”

When Colin Cormac's guilty grasp was closing with the spear, Rush'd in the chieftain's heir, and cried, ”What frenzied mood is here!

Sure many a May of ruby ray, as blushful on the brow, As rosy on the lip, is there--then, why so frantic thou?”

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