WILD rose of Alloway! my thanks; | |
| Thou mindst me of that autumn noon | |
| When first we met upon “the banks | |
| And braes o’ bonny Doon.” | |
| |
| Like thine, beneath the thorn-tree’s bough, | 5 |
| My sunny hour was glad and brief; | |
| We ’ve crossed the winter sea, and thou | |
| Art withered—flower and leaf. * * * * * | |
| I ’ve stood beside the cottage-bed | |
| Where the bard-peasant first drew breath; | 10 |
| A straw-thatched roof above his head, | |
| A straw-wrought couch beneath. | |
| |
| And I have stood beside the pile, | |
| His monument,—that tells to heaven | |
| The homage of earth’s proudest isle, | 15 |
| To that bard-peasant given. * * * * * | |
| And consecrated ground it is, | |
| The last, the hallowed home of one | |
| Who lives upon all memories, | |
| Though with the buried gone. | 20 |
| |
| Such graves as his are pilgrim-shrines, | |
| Shrines to no code or creed confined,— | |
| The Delphian vales, the Palestines, | |
| The Meccas of the mind. | |
| |
| Sages, with wisdom’s garland wreathed, | 25 |
| Crowned kings, and mitred priests of power, | |
| And warriors with their bright swords sheathed, | |
| The mightiest of the hour; | |
| |
| And lowlier names, whose humble home | |
| Is lit by fortune’s dimmer star, | 30 |
| Are there,—o’er wave and mountain come, | |
| From countries near and far; | |
| |
| Pilgrims, whose wandering feet have pressed | |
| The Switzer’s snow, the Arab’s sand, | |
| Or trod the piled leaves of the west, | 35 |
| My own green forest-land; | |
| |
| All ask the cottage of his birth, | |
| Gaze on the scenes he loved and sung, | |
| And gather feelings not of earth | |
| His fields and streams among. | 40 |
| |
| They linger by the Doon’s low trees, | |
| And pastoral Nith, and wooded Ayr, | |
| And round thy sepulchres, Dumfries! | |
| The poet’s tomb is there. | |
| |
| But what to them the sculptor’s art, | 45 |
| His funeral columns, wreaths, and urns? | |
| Wear they not graven on the heart | |
| The name of Robert Burns? | |
| |
