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 |  |
No Muse was ever invoked by me,
But an uncouth harp of olden key;
And with her have I ranged the Border green,
The Grampians stern, and the starry sheen;
With my gray plaid flapping around the strings,
And ragged coat, with its waving wings;
Yet aye my heart beat light and high
When an air of heaven, in passing by,
Breathed on the mellow chords; and then
I knew it was no earthly strain,
But note of wild mysterious kind,
From some blest land of unbodied mind.
But whence it flew—or whether it came
From the sounding rock or the solar beam,
Or tuneful angels passing away
O'er the bridge of the sky in the showery day,
When the cloudy curtain pervaded the east,
And the sunbeam kiss'd its humid breast—
In vain I look'd to the cloud overhead;
To the echoing mountain dark and dread;
To the sun-fawn fleet, or aerial bow—
I knew not whence were the strains till now.
But an uncouth harp of olden key;
And with her have I ranged the Border green,
The Grampians stern, and the starry sheen;
With my gray plaid flapping around the strings,
And ragged coat, with its waving wings;
Yet aye my heart beat light and high
When an air of heaven, in passing by,
Breathed on the mellow chords; and then
I knew it was no earthly strain,
But note of wild mysterious kind,
From some blest land of unbodied mind.
But whence it flew—or whether it came
From the sounding rock or the solar beam,
Or tuneful angels passing away
O'er the bridge of the sky in the showery day,
When the cloudy curtain pervaded the east,
And the sunbeam kiss'd its humid breast—
In vain I look'd to the cloud overhead;
To the echoing mountain dark and dread;
To the sun-fawn fleet, or aerial bow—
I knew not whence were the strains till now.
| The Works of The Ettrick Shepherd | |