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 |  |
CONCLUSION.
Return, my harp, unto the Border dale,
Thy native green hill, and thy fairy ring;
No more thy murmurs on the Grampian gale
May wake the hind in covert slumbering;
Nor must thy proud and far outstretched string
Presume to renovate the northern song,
Wakening the echoes Ossian taught to sing;
Their sleep of ages still they must prolong,
Till son inspired is born their native hills among.
Thy native green hill, and thy fairy ring;
No more thy murmurs on the Grampian gale
May wake the hind in covert slumbering;
Nor must thy proud and far outstretched string
Presume to renovate the northern song,
Wakening the echoes Ossian taught to sing;
Their sleep of ages still they must prolong,
Till son inspired is born their native hills among.
Loved was the voice that wooed from Yarrow bowers
Thy truant flight to that entrancing clime;
She weened thy melody and tuneful powers,
Mellowed by custom, and matured by time;
Or that the sounds and energies sublime,
That darkly dwell by cataract and steep,
Would rouse anew thy visionary chime,
Too long by southland breezes lulled asleep.
Oh may she well approve thy wild and wandering sweep!
Thy truant flight to that entrancing clime;
She weened thy melody and tuneful powers,
Mellowed by custom, and matured by time;
Or that the sounds and energies sublime,
That darkly dwell by cataract and steep,
Would rouse anew thy visionary chime,
Too long by southland breezes lulled asleep.
Oh may she well approve thy wild and wandering sweep!
Should her fair hand bestow the earliest bays;
Although proud learning lift the venomed eye,
Still shalt thou warble strains of other days,
Struck by some tuneful spirit lingering nigh;
Till those, who long have passed derisive by,
Shall list to hear thy tones when newly strung;
And Scottish maidens over thee shall sigh,
When I am all unnamed by human tongue,
And thy enchanted chords by other hands are rung!
Although proud learning lift the venomed eye,
Still shalt thou warble strains of other days,
Struck by some tuneful spirit lingering nigh;
Till those, who long have passed derisive by,
Shall list to hear thy tones when newly strung;
And Scottish maidens over thee shall sigh,
When I am all unnamed by human tongue,
And thy enchanted chords by other hands are rung!
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