And turning home without delay,

Coned his wild strain by mountain gray.

Each glen was sought for tales of old,

Of luckless love, of warrior bold,

Of ravished maid, or stolen child

By freakish fairy of the wild;

Of sheeted ghost, that had revealed

Dark deeds of guilt from man concealed;

Of boding dreams, of wandering spright,
Of dead-lights glimmering through the night;
Yea, every tale of ruth or weir,

Could waken pity, love, or fear,

Were decked anew, with anxious pain,

And sung to native airs again.

Alas! those lays of fire once more

Are wrecked 'mid heaps of mouldering lore!

And feeble he who dares presume

That heavenly Wake-light to relume.

But, grieved the legendary lay
Should perish from our land for aye,
While sings the lark above the wold,
And all his flocks rest in the fold,
Fondly he strikes, beside the pen,
The harp of Yarrow's braken glen.

December came; his aspect stern
Glared deadly o'er the mountain cairn;
A polar sheet was round him flung,
And ice-spears at his girdle hung;
O'er frigid field, and drifted cone,
He strode undaunted and alone;
Or, throned amid the Grampians gray,
Kept thaws and suns of heaven at bay.

Not stern December's fierce control Could quench the flame of minstrel's soul: Little recked they, our bards of old, Of Autumn's showers, or Winter's cold.

Sound slept they on the nighted hill,
Lulled by the winds or babbling rill:

Curtained within the Winter cloud;

The heath their couch, the sky their shroud. Yet their's the strains that touch the heart,

Bold, rapid, wild, and void of art.

Unlike the bards, whose milky lays

Delight in these degenerate days:
Their crystal spring, and heather brown,
Is changed to wine and couch of down;

Effeminate as lady gay,―

Such as the bard, so is his lay!

But then was seen, from every vale, Through drifting snows and rattling hail, Each Caledonian minstrel true,

Dressed in his plaid and bonnet blue, With harp across his shoulders slung, And music murmuring round his tongue,

Forcing his

way, in raptures high,

To Holyrood his skill to try.

Ah! when at home the songs they raised,

When gaping rustics stood and gazed,
Each bard believed, with ready will,

Unmatched his song, unmatched his skill!

But when the royal halls appeared,

Each aspect changed, each bosom feared;

And when in court of Holyrood

Filed harps and bards around him stood,

His eye emitted cheerless ray,

His hope, his spirit sunk away :

There stood the minstrel, but his mind.

Seemed left in native glen behind.

Unknown to men of sordid heart, What joys the poet's hopes impart; Unknown, how his high soul is torn By cold neglect, or canting scorn:

That meteor torch of mental light,

A breath can quench, or kindle bright. Oft has that mind, which braved serene The shafts of poverty and pain,

The Summer toil, the Winter blast,

Fallen victim to a frown at last.

Easy the boon he asks of thee;

O! spare his heart in courtesy!

There rolled each bard his anxious eye,

Or strode his adversary by.

No cause was there for names to scan,
Each minstrel's plaid bespoke his clan;

And the blunt borderer's plain array,
The bonnet broad and blanket gray.
Bard sought of bard a look to steal;
Eyes measured each from head to heel.
Much wonder rose, that men so famed,
Men save with rapture never named,
Looked only so,-they could not tell,-
Like other men, and scarce so well.