Stanzas for Music.
LORD BYRON
There be none of Beauty’s daughters
With a magic like thee;
And like music on the waters
Is thy sweet voice to me:
When, as if its sound were causing
The charmed ocean’s pausing,
The waves lie still and gleaming,
And the lull’d winds seem dreaming.
And the midnight moon is weaving
Her bright chain o’er the deep;
Whose breast is gently heaving,
As an infant’s asleep:
So the spirit bows before thee,
To listen and adore thee;
With a full but soft emotion,
Like the swell of Summer’s ocean.
Colin’s Cattle.
(Crodh Chaillean.)
CRO’ CHAILLEAN
A maiden sang sweetly
As a bird on a tree,
Cro’ Chaillean, Cro’ Chaillean,
Cro’ Chaillean for me!
My own Colin’s cattle,
Dappled, dun, brown, and grey,
They return to the milking
At the close of the day.
In the morning they wander
To their pastures afar,
Where the grass grows the greenest
By corrie and scaur.
They wander the uplands
Where the soft breezes blow,
And they drink from the fountain
Where the sweet cresses grow.
But so far as they wander,
Dappled, dun, brown, and grey,
They return to the milking
At the close of the day.
My bed’s in the Shian
On the canach’s soft down,
But I’d sleep best with Colin
In our shieling alone.
Thus a maiden sang sweetly
As a bird on a tree,
Cro’ Chaillean, Cro’ Chaillean,
Cro’ Chaillean for me.