I've seen the smiling of fortune beguiling,
I've tasted her favours, and felt her decay;
Sweet is her blessing, and kind her caressing,
But soon it is fled—it is fled far away.
I've seen the forest adorned of the foremost,
With flowers of the fairest, both pleasant and gay:
Full sweet was their blooming, their scent the air perfuming,
But now they are wither'd, and a' wede awae.
I've seen the morning, with gold the hills adorning,
And the red storm roaring, before the parting day;
I've seen Tweed's silver streams, glittering in the sunny beams,
Turn drumly[30] and dark, as they rolled on their way.
O fickle fortune! why this cruel sporting?
Why thus perplex us poor sons of a day?
Thy frowns cannot fear me, thy smiles cannot cheer me,
Since the flowers of the forest are a' wede awae.
FOOTNOTES:
[30] Drumly—Discoloured.
[THE LAIRD OF MUIRHEAD.]
This Ballad is a fragment from Mr Herd's MS., communicated to him by J. Grossett Muirhead, at Breadesholm, near Glasgow; who stated, that he extracted it, as relating to his own Family, from the complete Song, in which the names of twenty or thirty gentlemen were mentioned, contained in a large Collection, belonging to Mr Alexander Monro, merchant in Lisbon, supposed now to be lost.
It appears, from the Appendix to Nesbit's Heraldry, p. 264, that Muirhead of Lachop and Bullis, the person here called the Laird of Muirhead, was a man of rank, being rentaller, or perhaps feuar, of many crown lands in Galloway; and was, in truth, slain "in Campo Belli de Northumberland sub vexillo Regis," i.e. in the Field of Flodden.