Who to her secret breast confines her grief;
Dejected sighs the wintry night away,
And lonely muses all the summer day.
Her gallant sons, who, smit with honour’s charms,
Pursued the phantom Fame through war’s alarms,
Return no more; stretched on Hindostan’s plain,
Or sunk beneath the unfathomable main,
In vain her eyes the watery waste explore
For heroes—fated to return no more!”
“The Highlanders,” which gives the title to the book, is a poetical regret at the hard fate that forced so many to emigrate. The other poems are on a variety of topics, chiefly in illustration of the manners of the people among whom she lived. Take the following stanza on a sprig of heather:—