Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

Anacreon's flute with fitful swell
Can still our cares beguile,
And sweetly Sappho's moaning shell
Sobs round her sea-born isle;
The lyric notes, how neat they fa'
When plays the dapper Roman,
But the blithe whistle dings them a'
Of Rab, the Scottish ploughman.

A simple pipe! but in his hand
Mair potent in its power
Than e'er was eastern genie's wand
Within a Persian bower.
Around the peasant's lowly lot
It threw a noble halo,
And lighted up the ploughman's cot
With more than Summer's yellow.

It cheered the stey an' stourie road
With bursts o' sudden sang,

Till Labour, bowed beneath his load,
Looked up and trudged alang.
Sweet airs a' round the mountains hung,
And floated through the valleys,
And youth grew daft and age grew young
In cottage and in palace.

No finer music yet was heard,
Wedded to sweeter line,
Since new-made Eve on Eden's sward
To Adam sang langsyne;
Or since were dreamed the airs sublime
By the sweet Swan of Avon,
That flooded all the enchanted clime
Where Prospero found a haven.

He sang the native worth of mind,
The freedom of the soul,
And love's and friendship's joys refined,
And mankind's glorious goal.
What wonder if he moved the heart
With but a simple solo?—
He played wi' sae divine an art,
Our Scottish-born Apollo!