| |
| OH, to be in Scotland now, | |
| When the yellow autumn smiles | |
| So pleasantly on knoll and how; | |
| Where from rugged cliff and heathy brow | |
| Of each mountain height you look down defiles | 5 |
| Golden with the harvest’s glow. | |
| |
| Oh, to be in the kindly land, | |
| Whether mellow autumn smiles or no. | |
| It is well if the joyous reaper stand | |
| Breast-deep in the yellow corn, sickle in hand; | 10 |
| But I care not though sleety east winds blow, | |
| So long as I tread its strand. | |
| |
| To be wandering there at will, | |
| Be it sunshine or rain, or its winds that brace; | |
| To climb the old familiar hill; | 15 |
| Of the storied landscape to drink my fill, | |
| And look out on the grey old town at its base, | |
| And linger a dreamer still. | |
| |
| Ah! weep ye not for the dead, | |
| The dear ones safe in their native earth; | 20 |
| There fond hands pillowed the narrow bed | |
| Where fresh gowans, starlike, above their head | |
| Spangle the turf of each spring’s new birth | |
| For the living, loving tread. | |
| |
| Ah! not for them; doubly blest, | 25 |
| Safely home, and past all weeping; | |
| Hushed and still, there closely pressed | |
| Kith to kin on one mother’s breast | |
| All still, securely, trustfully sleeping, | |
| As in their first cradled rest. | 30 |
| |
| Weep rather, aye, weep sore, | |
| For him who departs to a distant land. | |
| There are pleasant homes on the far-off shore; | |
| Friends too, but not like the friends of yore | |
| That fondly, but vainly, beckoning stand | 35 |
| For him who returns no more. | |
| |
| Oh, to lie in Scottish earth, | |
| Lapped in the clods of its kindly soil; | |
| Where the soaring laverock’s song has birth | |
| In the welkin’s blue, and its heavenward mirth | 40 |
| Lends a rapture to earth-born toil— | |
| What matter! Death recks not the dearth. | |
| |
