Not vernal showers to budding flowers,
Not autumn to the farmer,
So dear can be as thou to me,
My fair, my lovely charmer.
Of Alison Begbie he wrote in ‘The Lass o’ Cessnock Banks’:
But it’s not her air, her form, her face,
Tho’ matching beauty’s fabled queen;
’Tis the mind that shines in ev’ry grace,
And chiefly in her rogueish een.
In ‘Young Peggy Blooms’ he describes her:
Young Peggy blooms our bonniest lass,
Her blush is like the morning,
The rosy dawn, the springing grass
With early gems adorning.
Her eyes outshine the radiant beams
That gild the passing shower,
And glitter o’er the crystal streams,
And cheer each fresh’ning flower.
In ‘Will Ye Go to the Indies, My Mary?’ he says:
O sweet grows the lime and the orange,
And the apple o’ the pine;
But a’ the charms o’ the Indies
Can never equal thine.
The following are emblems of beauty in the ‘Lass o’ Ballochmyle’:
On every blade the pearls hang.
Her look was like the morning’s eye,
Her air like Nature’s vernal smile.
Fair is the morn in flowery May,
And sweet is night in autumn mild.
Describing ‘My Nannie O’ he says: