| |
(Scene—Kinnaird Burn, near Pitlochrie.)
COME here, good people great and small, that wander far abroad, | |
| To drink of drumly German wells, and make a weary road | |
| To Baden and to Wiesbaden, and how they all are nam’d, | |
| To Carlsbad and to Kissingen, for healing virtue fam’d; | |
| Come stay at home, and keep your feet from dusty travel free, | 5 |
| And I will show you what rare bath a good God gave to me; | |
| ’T is hid among the Highland hills beneath the purple brae, | |
| With cooling freshness free to all, nor doctor’s fee to pay. | |
| |
| No craft of mason made it here, nor carpenter, I wot; | |
| Nor tinkering fool with hammering tool to shape the charmed spot; | 10 |
| But down the rocky-breasted glen the foamy torrent falls | |
| Into the amber caldron deep, fenced round with granite walls. | |
| Nor gilded beam, nor pictur’d dome, nor curtain, roofs it in, | |
| But the blue sky rests, and white clouds float, above the bubbling linn, | |
| Where God’s own hand hath scoop’d it out in Nature’s Titan hall, | 15 |
| And from her cloud-fed fountains drew its waters free to all. | |
| |
| Oh come and see my Highland bath, and prove its freshening flood, | |
| And spare to taint your skin with swathes of drumly German mud: | |
| Come plunge with me into the wave like liquid topaz fair, | |
| And to the waters give your back that spout down bravely there; | 20 |
| Then float upon the swirling flood, and, like a glancing trout, | |
| Plash about, and dash about, and make a lively rout, | |
| And to the gracious sun display the glory of your skin, | |
| As you dash about and splash about in the foamy-bubbling linn. | |
| |
| Oh come and prove my bonnie bath; in sooth ’t is furnish’d well | 25 |
| With trees, and shrubs, and spreading ferns, all in the rocky dell, | |
| And roses hanging from the cliff in grace of white and red, | |
| And little tiny birches nodding lightly overhead, | |
| And spiry larch with purple cones, and tips of virgin green, | |
| And leafy shade of hazel copse with sunny glints between: | 30 |
| Oh might the Roman wight be here who praised Bandusia’s well, | |
| He ’d find a bath to Nymphs more dear in my sweet Highland dell. | |
| |
| Some folks will pile proud palaces, and some will wander far | |
| To scan the blinding of a sun, or the blinking of a star; | |
| Some sweat through Afric’s burning sands; and some will vex their soul | 35 |
| To find heaven knows what frosty prize beneath the Arctic pole. | |
| God bless them all; and may they find what thing delights them well | |
| In east or west, or north or south,—but I at home will dwell | |
| Where fragrant ferns their fronds uncurl, and healthful breezes play, | |
| And clear brown waters grandly swirl beneath the purple brae. | 40 |
| |
| Oh come and prove my Highland bath, the burn, and all the glen, | |
| Hard-toiling wights in dingy nooks, and scribes with inky pen, | |
| Strange thoughtful men with curious quests that vex your fretful brains, | |
| And scheming sons of trade who fear to count your slippery gains; | |
| Come wander up the burn with me, and thread the winding glen, | 45 |
| And breathe the healthful power that flows down from the breezy Ben, | |
| And plunge you in the deep brown pool; and from beneath the spray | |
| You ’ll come forth like a flower that blooms ’neath freshening showers in May! | |
| |
