III.
How slow ye move, ye heavy hours;
The joyless day how dreary!
It was na sae ye glinted by,
When I was wi’ my dearie.
For oh! her lanely nights are lang;
And oh, her dreams are eerie;
And oh, her widow’d heart is sair,
That’s absent frae her dearie.
CCXXIX.
LET NOT WOMAN E’ER COMPLAIN.
Tune—“Duncan Gray.”
[“These English songs,” thus complains the poet, in the letter which conveyed this lyric to Thomson, “gravel me to death: I have not that command of the language that I have of my native tongue. I have been at ‘Duncan Gray,’ to dress it in English, but all I can do is deplorably stupid. For instance:”]
I.
Let not woman e’er complain
Of inconstancy in love;
Let not woman e’er complain
Fickle man is apt to rove:
Look abroad through nature’s range,
Nature’s mighty law is change;
Ladies, would it not be strange,
Man should then a monster prove?
II.