While larks with little wing
Fann’d the pure air,
Tasting the breathing spring,
Forth I did fare:
Gay the sun’s golden eye
Peep’d o’er the mountains high;
Such thy morn! did I cry,
Phillis the fair.
II.
In each bird’s careless song,
Glad I did share;
While yon wild flowers among,
Chance led me there:
Sweet to the opening day,
Rosebuds bent the dewy spray;
Such thy bloom! did I say,
Phillis the fair.
III.
Down in a shady walk
Doves cooing were,
I mark’d the cruel hawk,
Caught in a snare:
So kind may fortune be,
Such make his destiny!
He who would injure thee,
Phillis the fair.
CC.
HAD I A CAVE.
Tune—“Robin Adair.”
[Alexander Cunningham, on whose unfortunate love-adventure Burns composed this song for Thomson, was a jeweller in Edinburgh, well connected, and of agreeable and polished manners. The story of his faithless mistress was the talk of Edinburgh, in 1793, when these words were written: the hero of the lay has been long dead; the heroine resides, a widow, in Edinburgh.]