The cheerfu’ supper done, wi’ serious face,
They, round the ingle, form a circle wide;
The sire turns o’er, wi’ patriarchal grace,
The big ha’-Bible,[324-43] ance[324-44] his father’s pride:
His bonnet[324-45] rev’rently is laid aside,
His lyart[324-46] haffets[324-47] wearing thin an’ bare:
Those strains that once did sweet in Zion glide,
He wales[325-48] a portion with judicious care;
And “Let us worship God!” he says, with solemn air.
X
They chant their artless notes in simple guise;
They tune their hearts, by far the noblest aim:
Perhaps Dundee’s wild warbling measures rise
Or plaintive Martyrs, worthy of the name,
Or noble Elgin beats the heav’nward flame,
The sweetest far of Scotia’s holy lays.
Compared with these, Italian trills are tame;
The tickl’d ears no heart-felt raptures raise;
Nae unison hae they with our Creator’s praise.
XI
The priest-like father reads the sacred page,
How Abram was the friend of God on high;
Or, Moses bade eternal warfare wage
With Amalek’s ungracious progeny;
Or how the royal bard did groaning lie
Beneath the stroke of Heav’n’s avenging ire;
Or Job’s pathetic plaint, and wailing cry;
Or rapt Isaiah’s wild, seraphic fire;
Or other holy seers that tune the sacred lyre.
XII
Perhaps the Christian volume is the theme,
How guiltless blood for guilty man was shed;
How He, who bore in heaven the second name,
Had not on earth whereon to lay his head;
How his first followers and servants sped;
The precepts sage they wrote to many a land:
How he, who lone in Patmos banished,
Saw in the sun a mighty angel stand,
And heard great Bab’lon’s doom pronounc’d by Heaven’s command.