So let each Cavalier who loves honour and me,
Come follow the bonnet of Bonny Dundee.

Come fill up my cup, come fill up my can,
Come saddle your horses, and call up your men;
Come open the West Port and let me gae free,
And it's room for the bonnets of Bonny
Dundee !'

Dundee he is mounted, he rides up the street,
The bells are rung backward, the drums they are
beat;

But the Provost, douce man, said, 'Just e'en let him be,

The Gude Town is weel quit of the Deil of Dundee !'

As he rode down the sanctified bends of the Bow, Ilk carline was flyting and shaking her pow;

But the young plants of grace they looked couthie and slee,

Thinking, luck to thy bonnet, thou Bonnie Dundee !

With sour-featured Whigs the Grassmarket was panged

As if half the West had set tryst to be hanged; There was spite in each look, there was fear in each e'e,

As they watched for the bonnets of Bonny Dundee.

These cowls of Kilmarnoch had spits and had spears,

And lang-hafted gullies to kill Cavaliers;

But they shrank to close-heads, and the causeway was free,

At the toss of the bonnet of Bonny Dundee.

He spurred to the foot of the proud Castle rock, And with the gay Gordon he gallantly spoke: 'Let Mons Meg and her marrows speak twa words or three,

For the love of the bonnet of Bonny Dundee.'

The Gordon demands of him which way he goes'Where'er shall direct me the shade of Montrose! Your Grace in short space shall hear tidings of me, Or that low lies the bonnet of Bonny Dundee.

'There are hills beyond Pentland and lands beyond Forth,

If there's lords in the Lowlands, there's chiefs in the North;

There are wild Duniewassals three thousand times three,

Will cry hoigh for the bonnet of Bonny Dundee.

'There's brass on the target of barkened bull-hide; There's steel in the scabbard that dangles beside; The brass shall be burnished, the steel shall flash free,

At a toss of the bonnet of Bonny Dundee.

'Away to the hills, to the caves, to the rocks,Ere I own a usurper, I'll couch with the fox; And tremble, false Whigs, in the midst of your glee,

You have not seen the last of my bonnet and me!'

He waved his proud hand, and the trumpets were blown,

The kettle-drums clashed, and the horsemen rode

on,

Till on Ravelston's cliffs and on Clermiston's lee
Died away the wild war-notes of Bonny Dundee.

Come fill up my cup, come fill up my can,
Come saddle the horses and call up the men,
Come open your gates, and let me gae free,
For it's up with the bonnets of Bonny Dundee !
Sir Walter Scott.

135

THE GOLDEN AGE

(Hellas.)

THE world's great age begins anew,
The golden years return,

The earth doth like a snake renew
Her winter weeds outworn:

Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam
Like wrecks of a dissolving dream.

A brighter Hellas rears its mountains
From waves serener far;

A new Peneus rolls his fountains

Against the morning star;

Where fairer Tempes bloom, there sleep
Young Cyclads on a sunnier deep.

A loftier Argo cleaves the main,
Fraught with a later prize;
Another Orpheus sings again,

And loves, and weeps, and dies;
A new Ulysses leaves once more
Calypso for his native shore.

Oh, write no more the tale of Troy,
If earth death's scroll must be!
Nor mix with Laian rage the joy
Which dawns upon the free;
Although a subtler Sphinx renew
Riddles of death Thebes never knew.

Another Athens shall arise,

And to remoter time

Bequeath, like sunset to the skies,
The splendour of its prime;

And leave, if nought so bright may live,
All earth can take or Heaven can give.

Saturn and Love their long repose
Shall burst, more bright and good
Than all who fell, than One who rose,
Than many unsubdued:

Not gold, not blood, their altar dowers,
But votive tears and symbol flowers.

Oh cease! must hate and death return?
Cease! must men kill and die?
Cease! drain not to its dregs the urn
Of bitter prophecy.

The world is weary of the past,

Oh might it die or rest at last!

136

Percy Bysshe Shelley.

THE ISLES OF GREECE

(Don Juan.)

THE isles of Greece, the isles of Greece!
Where burning Sappho loved and sung,
Where grew the arts of war and peace,
Where Delos rose, and Phoebus sprung!
Eternal summer gilds them yet,
But all, except their sun, is set.

The Scian and the Teian muse,
The hero's harp, the lover's lute,
Have found the fame your shores refuse;
Their place of birth alone is mute
To sounds which echo further west
Than your sires' Islands of the Blest.

The mountains look on Marathon,
And Marathon looks on the sea;
And musing there an hour alone,

I dreamed that Greece might still be free;
For standing on the Persians' grave,
I could not deem myself a slave.

A king sate on the rocky brow

Which looks o'er sea-born Salamis; And ships, by thousands, lay below,

And men in nations;-all were his ! He counted them at break of dayAnd when the sun set, where were they?

And where are they, and where art thou, My country? On thy voiceless shore The heroic lay is tuneless now,

The heroic bosom beats no more! And must thy lyre, so long divine, Degenerate into hands like mine? 'Tis something, in the dearth of fame, Though linked among a fettered race, To feel at least a patriot's shame,

Even as I sing, suffuse my face; For what is left the poet here? For Greeks a blush--for Greece a tear. Must we but weep o'er days more blest? Must we but blush?-Our fathers bled. Earth! render back from out thy breast A remnant of our Spartan dead! Of the three hundred grant but three, To make a new Thermopyla!

What, silent still, and silent all?

Ah, no!-the voices of the dead Sound like a distant torrent's fall,

And answer, 'Let one living head, But one arise, we come, we come!' 'Tis but the living who are dumb.

In vain—in vain: strike other chords;
Fill high the cup with Samian wine!
Leave battles to the Turkish hordes,

And shed the blood of Scio's vine!
Hark! rising to the ignoble call,
How answers each bold Bacchanal!