Rambles Through the Land of Burns

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Dunlop & Drennan, 1879 - 274 pages

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Page 17 - Careless their merits, or their faults to scan, His pity gave ere charity began. Thus to relieve the wretched was his pride, And e'en his" failings leaned to virtue's side ; But in his duty prompt at every call, He watched and wept, he prayed and felt for all.
Page 190 - There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore, There is society, where none intrudes, By the deep Sea, and music in its roar: I love not Man the less, but Nature more, From these our interviews, in which I steal From all I may be, or have been before, •To mingle with the Universe, and feel What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean— roll!
Page 162 - All hail! my own inspired Bard! In me thy native Muse regard! Nor longer mourn thy fate is hard, Thus poorly low! I come to give thee such reward, As we bestow...
Page 71 - I was not so presumptuous as to imagine that I could make verses like printed ones, composed by men who had Greek and Latin; but my girl sung a song which was said to be composed by a small country laird's son, on one of his father's maids, with whom he was in love; and I saw no reason why I might not rhyme as well as he; for excepting that he could shear sheep, and cast peats, his father living in the Moorlands, he had no more scholar craft than myself. Thus with me began love and poetry: which...
Page 70 - You know our country custom of coupling a man and woman together as partners in the labours of harvest. In my fifteenth autumn, my partner was a bewitching creature, a year younger than myself. My scarcity of English denies me the power of doing her justice in that language, but you know the Scotch idiom: she was a "bonnie, sweet, sonsie lass".
Page 202 - To leave the bonnie banks of Ayr. Farewell, old Coila's hills and dales, Her heathy moors and winding vales ; The scenes where wretched fancy roves, Pursuing past, unhappy loves! Farewell, my friends ! Farewell, my foes! My peace with these, my love with those— The bursting tears my heart declare, Farewell the bonnie banks of Ayr ! SONG.
Page 237 - They reel'd, they set, they cross'd, they cleekit, Till ilka carlin swat and reekit, And coost her duddies to the wark, And linket at it in her sark! Now Tam, O Tam, had thae been queans, A' plump and strapping in their teens! Their sarks, instead o' creeshie flannen, Been snaw-white seventeen hunder linen!
Page 231 - THOU lingering star, with lessening ray, That lov'st to greet the early morn, Again thou usherest in the day My Mary from my Soul was torn. O Mary ! dear, departed shade ! Where is thy place of blissful rest ? Seest thou thy lover lowly laid ? Hearst thou the groans that rend his breast?
Page 3 - Tis Flora's page: — In every place, In every season, fresh and fair, It opens with perennial grace, And blossoms everywhere. On waste and woodland, rock and plain, Its humble buds unheeded rise; The Rose has but a summer reign, — The Daisy never dies.
Page 203 - The gloomy night is gathering fast — when a letter from Dr. Blacklock to a friend of mine, overthrew all my schemes, by opening new prospects to my poetic ambition.

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