That brighten'd at our evening fire!
From the thatch'd mansion's grey-hair'd Sire,1
Wise without learning, plain and good,
And sprung of Scotland's gentler blood;
Whose eye, in age, quick, clear, and keen,
Show'd what in youth its glance had been;
Whose doom discording neighbours sought,
Content with equity unbought;2
To him the venerable Priest,
Our frequent and familiar guest,
Whose life and manners well could paint
Alike the student and the saint ;3
Alas! whose speech too oft I broke
With gambol rude and timeless joke:
For I was wayward, bold, and wild,
A self-will'd imp, a grandame's child;
But half a plague, and half a jest,
Was still endured, beloved, caress'd.
For me, thus nurtured, dost thou ask The classic poet's well-conn'd task?
1 [Robert Scott of Sandy knows, the grandfather of the Poet.] Upon revising the Poem, it seems proper to mention that the lines,
"Whose doom discording neighbours sought,
Content with equity unbought:"
have been unconsciously borrowed from a passage in Dryden's beautiful epistle to John Driden of Chesterton.-1808. Note to Second Edit.
[MS. "The student, gentleman, and saint."
The reverend gentleman alluded to was Mr John Martin, minister of Mertoun, in which parish Smailholm Tower is situated.]
Nay, Erskine, nay-On the wild hill
Let the wild heath-bell flourish still;
Cherish the tulip, prune the vine,
But freely let the woodbine twine,
And leave untrimm'd the eglantine:
Nay, my friend, nay-Since oft thy praise
Hath given fresh vigour to my lays ;
Since oft thy judgment could refine
My flatten'd thought, or cumbrous line;
Still kind, as is thy wont, attend,
And in the minstrel spare the friend.
Though wild as cloud, as stream, as gale,
Flow forth, flow unrestrain'd, my Tale!
THE livelong day Lord Marmion rode :
The mountain path the Palmer show'd
By glen and streamlet winded still,
Where stunted birches hid the rill.
They might not choose the lowland road,
For the Merse forayers were abroad,
Who, fired with hate and thirst of prey,
Had scarcely fail'd to bar their way.
Oft on the trampling band, from crown
Of some tall cliff, the deer look'd down ;
On wing of jet, from his repose
In the deep heath, the black-cock rose ;
1 [MS.—" They might not choose the easier road, For many a forayer was abroad."]
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