And sure, through many a varied scene, Unkindness never came between. Away these winged years have flown, To join the mass of ages gone; And though deep marked, like all below, With chequered shades of joy and woe; Though thou o'er realms and seas hast ranged, Marked cities lost and empires changed, While here, at home, my narrower ken Somewhat of manners saw, and men; Though varying wishes, hopes, and fears, Fevered the progress of these years, Yet now, days, weeks, and months, but seem The recollection of a dream; So still we glide down to the sea Of fathomless eternity. Even now it scarcely seems a day, Since first I tuned this idle lay; A task so often thrown aside, When leisure graver cares denied, That now, November's dreary gale, And Blackhouse heights, and Ettricke Pen, And mountain dark, and flooded mead, Bids us forsake the banks of Tweed. Earlier than wont along the sky, Mixed with the rack, the snow-mists fly: Has something of our envy won, As thou with pencil, I with pen, The features traced of hill and glen; Or idly busied him to guide At midnight now, the snowy plain When red hath set the beamless sun, Through heavy vapours dank and dun; When the tired ploughman, dry and warm, Hears, half asleep, the rising storm Hurling the hail, and sleeted rain, Against the casement's tinkling pane; The sounds that drive wild deer, and fox, To shelter in the brake and rocks, Are warnings which the shepherd ask To dismal, and to dangerous task. Oft he looks forth, and hopes, in vain, The blast may sink in mellowing rain; And forth the hardy swain must go. Long, with dejected look and whine, Least deeply lies the drift below. The blast, that whistles o'er the fells, Oft he looks back, while streaming far, His cottage window seems a star, Loses its feeble gleam, and then Turns patient to the blast again, And, facing to the tempest's sweep, Drives through the gloom his lagging sheep: If fails his heart, if his limbs fail, Benumbing death is in the gale; His paths, his landmarks, all unknown, Close to the hut, no more his own, Close to the aid he sought in vain, The morn may find the stiffened swain: And licks his cheek, to break his rest. Who envies now the shepherd's lot, His healthy fare, his rural cot, His summer couch by greenwood tree, His rustic kirn's* loud revelry, His native hill-notes, tuned on high, To Marion of the blithesome eye; His crook, his scrip, his oaten reed, Changes not so with us, my Skene, Of human life the varying scene ?.. * The Scottish harvest-home. |