DEAR is my little native vale, The ring-dove builds and murmurs there; Close by my cot she tells her tale To every passing villager. The squirrel leaps from tree to tree, In orange-groves and myrtle-bowers, That breathe a gale of fragrance round, I charin the fairy-footed hours With my loved lute's romantic sound; Or crowns of living laurel weave, For those that win the race at eve. The shepherd's horn at break of day, The ballet danced in twilight glade, The canzonet and roundelay Sung in the silent green-wood shade; These simple joys, that never fail, Shall bind me to my native vale. AN INSCRIPTION. SHEPHERD, or Huntsman, or worn Mariner, And these rude seats of earth within the grove, The two small cells scooped in the marble there, * See an anecdote related by Pausanias. iii. 20. A Turkish superstition. WRITTEN IN THE HIGHLANDS OF SCOTLAND, SEPTEMBER 2, 1812. BLUE was the loch, the clouds were gone, Ben-Lomond in his glory shone, When, Luss, I left thee; when the breeze Bore me from thy silver sands, Thy kirk-yard wall among the trees, Where, grey with age, the dial stands ; That dial so well-known to me! -Tho' many a shadow it had shed, Beloved Sister, since with thee The legend on the stone was read. The fairy-isles fled far away; That with its woods and uplands green, And songs are heard at close of day; While, as the boat went merrily, Much of ROB Roy the boat-man told; His arm that fell below his knee, His cattle-ford and mountain-hold. Tarbat,† thy shore I climbed at last; And, thy shady region passed, Upon another shore I stood, And looked upon another flood; ‡ Night fell; and dark and darker grew That narrow sea, that narrow sky, As o'er the glimmering waves we flew ; The sea-bird rustling, wailing by. * A famous out-law. + Signifying in the Erse language an Isthmus. Loch-Long. |