Poems and Songs of Robert Burns

Admiring Nature in her wildest grace, These northern scenes with weary feet I trace; O’er many a winding dale and painful steep, Th’ abodes of covey’d grouse and timid sheep, [Footnote 1: These are rhymes of dubious authenticity.—Lang.] My savage journey, curious, I pursue, Till fam’d Breadalbane opens to my view.— The meeting cliffs each deep-sunk glen divides, The woods wild scatter’d, clothe their ample sides; Th’ outstretching lake, imbosomed ’mong the hills, The eye with wonder and amazement fills; The Tay meand’ring sweet in infant pride, The palace rising on his verdant side, The lawns wood-fring’d in Nature’s native taste, The hillocks dropt in Nature’s careless haste, The arches striding o’er the new-born stream, The village glittering in the noontide beam— Poetic ardours in my bosom swell, Lone wand’ring by the hermit’s mossy cell; The sweeping theatre of hanging woods, Th’ incessant roar of headlong tumbling floods— Here Poesy might wake her heav’n-taught lyre, And look through Nature with creative fire; Here, to the wrongs of Fate half reconcil’d, Misfortunes lighten’d steps might wander wild; And Disappointment, in these lonely bounds, Find balm to soothe her bitter, rankling wounds: Here heart-struck Grief might heav’nward stretch her scan, And injur’d Worth forget and pardon man.