The Works of The Ettrick Shepherd Centenary Edition. With a Memoir of the Author, by the Rev. Thomas Thomson ... Poems and Life. With Many Illustrative Engravings [by James Hogg] |
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 | The Works of The Ettrick Shepherd |  |
52
Lucky the wish of every dame:
The bard who rose at herald's call
Was wont to sing in Highland hall,
Where the wild chieftain of M'Lean
Upheld his dark Hebridian reign;
Where floated crane and clamorous gull
Above the misty shores of Mull;
And evermore the billows rave
Round many a saint and sovereign's grave.
There, round Columba's ruins gray,
The shades of monks are wont to stray,
And slender forms of nuns, that weep
In moonlight by the murmuring deep,
O'er early loves and passions crost,
And being's end for ever lost.
No earthly form their names to save,
No stem to flourish o'er their grave,
No blood of theirs beyond the shrine
To nurse the human soul divine,
Still cherish youth by time unworn,
And flow in ages yet unborn;
While mind, surviving evermore,
Unbodied seeks that lonely shore.
| The Works of The Ettrick Shepherd | |