Here bright are the skies; and these valleys of bloom
May enchant the traveller's eye;
But all seems dress'd in death-like gloom,
To the exile who comes to die!
O bonnie grows the broom, &c.
Far round and round spreads the howling waste,
Where the wild beast roams at will;
And yawning cleughs, by woods embraced,
Where the savage lurks to kill!
O bonnie grows the broom, &c.
Full oft over Cheviot's uplands green
My dreaming fancy strays;
But I wake to weep 'mid the desolate scene
That scowls on my aching gaze!
O bonnie grows the broom, &c.
Oh light, light is poverty's lowliest state,
On Scotland's peaceful strand,
Compared with the heart-sick exile's fate,
In this wild and weary land!
O bonnie grows the broom, &c.
LOVE AND SOLITUDE.
I love the free ridge of the mountain,
When dawn lifts her fresh dewy eye;
I love the old ash by the fountain,
When noon's summer fervours are high:
And dearly I love when the gray-mantled gloaming
Adown the dim valley glides slowly along,
And finds me afar by the pine-forest roaming,
A-list'ning the close of the gray linnet's song.
When the moon from her fleecy cloud scatters
Over ocean her silvery light,
And the whisper of woodlands and waters
Comes soft through the silence of night—
I love by the ruin'd tower lonely to linger,
A-dreaming to fancy's wild witchery given,
And hear, as if swept by some seraph's pure finger,
The harp of the winds breathing accents of heaven.
Yet still, 'mid sweet fancies o'erflowing,
Oft bursts from my lone breast the sigh—
I yearn for the sympathies glowing,
When hearts to each other reply!
Come, friend of my bosom! with kindred devotion,
To worship with me by wild mountain and grove;
O come, my Eliza, with dearer emotion,
With rapture to hallow the chaste home of love!