Powers celestial! whose protection
Ever guards the virtuous fair,
While in distant climes I wander,
Let my Mary be your care:
Let her form sae fair and faultless,
Fair and faultless as your own,
Let my Mary’s kindred spirit
Draw your choicest influence down.
II.
Make the gales you waft around her
Soft and peaceful as her breast;
Breathing in the breeze that fans her,
Soothe her bosom into rest:
Guardian angels! O protect her,
When in distant lands I roam;
To realms unknown while fate exiles me,
Make her bosom still my home.
XXX.
THE LASS OF BALLOCHMYLE.
Tune—“Miss Forbes’s Farewell to Banff.”
[Miss Alexander, of Ballochmyle, as the poet tells her in a letter, dated November, 1786, inspired this popular song. He chanced to meet her in one of his favourite walks on the banks of the Ayr, and the fine scene and the lovely lady set the muse to work. Miss Alexander, perhaps unaccustomed to this forward wooing of the muse, allowed the offering to remain unnoticed for a time: it is now in a costly frame, and hung in her chamber—as it deserves to be.]
I.
’Twas even—the dewy fields were green,
On every blade the pearls hang,
The zephyr wanton’d round the bean,
And bore its fragrant sweets alang:
In ev’ry glen the mavis sang,
All nature listening seem’d the while,
Except where greenwood echoes rang
Amang the braes o’ Ballochmyle!