I.
O were my love yon lilac fair,
Wi’ purple blossoms to the spring;
And I, a bird to shelter there,
When wearied on my little wing!
How I wad mourn, when it was torn
By autumn wild, and winter rude!
But I wad sing on wanton wing,
When youthfu’ May its bloom renewed.
II.
O gin my love were yon red rose,
That grows upon the castle wa’;
And I mysel’ a drap o’ dew,
Into her bonnie breast to fa’!
Oh, there beyond expression blest,
I’d feast on beauty a’ the night;
Seal’d on her silk-saft faulds to rest,
Till fley’d awa by Phœbus’ light.
CXCVIII.
BONNIE JEAN.
[Jean M’Murdo, the heroine of this song, the eldest daughter of John M’Murdo of Drumlanrig, was, both in merit and look, very worthy of so sweet a strain, and justified the poet from the charge made against him in the West, that his beauties were not other men’s beauties. In the M’Murdo manuscript, in Burns’s handwriting, there is a well-merited compliment which has slipt out of the printed copy in Thomson:—
“Thy handsome foot thou shalt na set
In barn or byre to trouble thee.”]
I.