Sweet syren, breathe the powerful strain!
Lochroyan's Damsel sails the main ;

The crystal tower enchanted see! "Now break," she cries "ye fairy charms!" As round she sails with fond alarms,

"Now break, and set my true love free!".

Lord Barnard is to greenwood gone,
Where fair Gil Morrice sits alone,

And careless combs his yellow hair.
Ah! mourn the youth, untimely slain !
The meanest of Lord Barnard's train

The hunter's mangled head must bear.

Or, change these notes of deep despair
For love's more soothing tender air;
Sing how, beneath the greenwood tree,
Brown Adam's + love maintain'd her truth,
Nor would resign the exil'd youth
For any knight the fair could see.

*The Lass of Lochroyan.

See the ballad entitled, Brown Adam.

And sing the Hawk of pinion gray,*
To southern climes who wing'd his way,
For he could speak as well as fly;
Her brethren how the fair beguil❜d,
And on her Scottish lover smil'd,

As slow she rais'd her languid eye.

Fair was her cheek's carnation glow,
Like red blood on a wreath of snow;
Like evening's dewy star her eye;
White as the sea-mew's downy breast,
Borne on the surge's foamy crest,

Her graceful bosom heav'd the sigh.

In youth's first morn, alert and gay,
Ere rolling years had pass'd away,
Remember'd like a morning dream,
I heard these dulcet measures float
In many a liquid winding note

Along the banks of Teviot's stream.

Sweet sounds! that oft have sooth'd to rest The sorrows of my guileless breast,

* See the Gray Goss Hawk.

And charm'd away mine infant tears: Fond memory shall your strains repeat, Like distant echoes, doubly sweet,

That in the wild the traveller hears.

And thus, the exil'd Scotian maid,
By fond alluring love betray'd

To visit Syria's date-crown'd shore,
In plaintive strains that sooth'd despair
Did "Bothwell's banks that bloom so fair,"
And scenes of early youth, deplore.

*"So fell it out of late years, that an English gentleman, travelling in Palestine, not far from Jerusalem, as he passed through a country town, he heard by chance a woman sitting at her door, dandling her child, to sing, Bothwel bank, thou blumest fair. The gentleman hereat exceedingly wondered, and forthwith in English saluted the woman, who joyfully answered him; and said, she was right glad there to see a gentleman of our isle; and told him that she was a Scottish woman, and came first from Scotland to Venice, and from Venice thither, where her fortune was to be the wife of an officer under the Turk; who, being at that instant absent, and very soon to return, she entreated the gentleman to stay there until his The which he did; and she, for country sake, to show herself the more kind and bountiful unto him, told her husband at his home-coming that the gentleman was her kinsman; whereupon her husband entertained him very friendly; and at his departure gave him divers things of good value.” Verstegan's Restitution of Decayed Intelligence. Chap. Of the Surnames of our Ancient Families, p. 296. Antwerp, 1605.

return.

Soft syren! whose enchanting strain
Floats wildly round my raptur'd brain,
I bid your pleasing haunts adieu!

Yet, fabling fancy oft shall lead

My footsteps to the silver Tweed,

Through scenes that I no more must view.

ODE

ON VISITING FLODDEN.

GREEN Flodden, on thy blood-stain'd head

Descend no rain nor vernal dew!

But still, thou charnel of the dead,

May whitening bones thy surface strew!

Soon as I tread thy rush-clad vale,
Wild fancy feels the clasping mail;

The rancour of a thousand years
Glows in my breast; again I burn

To see the banner'd pomp of war return,

And mark beneath the moon the silver light of spears.

Lo! bursting from their common tomb,

The spirits of the ancient dead Dimly streak the parted gloom, With awful faces, ghastly red; As once around their martial king They clos'd the death-devoted ring,