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1746
THE WEARY day rins down and dies, | |
| The weary night wears through: | |
| And never an hour is fair wi’ flower, | |
| And never a flower wi’ dew. | |
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| I would the day were night for me, | 5 |
| I would the night were day: | |
| For then would I stand in my ain fair land, | |
| As now in dreams I may. | |
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| O lordly flow the Loire and Seine, | |
| And loud the dark Durance: | 10 |
| But bonnier shine the braes of Tyne | |
| Than a’ the fields of France; | |
| And the waves of Till that speak sae still | |
| Gleam goodlier where they glance. | |
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| O weel were they that fell fighting | 15 |
| On dark Drumossie’s day: | |
| They keep their hame ayont the faem, | |
| And we die far away. | |
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| O sound they sleep, and saft, and deep, | |
| But night and day wake we; | 20 |
| And ever between the sea-banks green | |
| Sounds loud the sundering sea. | |
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| And ill we sleep, sae sair we weep, | |
| But sweet and fast sleep they; | |
| And the mool that haps them roun’ and laps them | 25 |
| Is e’en their country’s clay; | |
| But the land we tread that are not dead | |
| Is strange as night by day. | |
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| Strange as night in a strange man’s sight, | |
| Though fair as dawn it be: | 30 |
| For what is here that a stranger’s cheer | |
| Should yet wax blithe to see? | |
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| The hills stand steep, the dells lie deep, | |
| The fields are green and gold: | |
| The hill-streams sing, and the hill-sides ring, | 35 |
| As ours at home of old. | |
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| But hills and flowers are nane of ours, | |
| And ours are oversea: | |
| And the kind strange land whereon we stand, | |
| It wotsna what were we | 40 |
| Or ever we came, wi’ scathe and shame, | |
| To try what end might be. | |
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| Scathe, and shame, and a waefu’ name, | |
| And a weary time and strange, | |
| Have they that seeing a weird for dreeing | 45 |
| Can die, and cannot change. | |
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| Shame and scorn may we thole that mourn, | |
| Though sair be they to dree: | |
| But ill may we bide the thoughts we hide, | |
| Mair keen than wind and sea. | 50 |
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| Ill may we thole the night’s watches, | |
| And ill the weary day: | |
| And the dreams that keep the gates of sleep, | |
| A waefu’ gift gie they; | |
| For the sangs they sing us, the sights they bring us, | 55 |
| The morn blaws all away. | |
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| On Aikenshaw the sun blinks braw, | |
| The burn rins blithe and fain: | |
| There ’s nought wi’ me I wadna gie | |
| To look thereon again. | 60 |
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| On Keilder-side the wind blaws wide; | |
| There sounds nae hunting-horn | |
| That rings sae sweet as the winds that beat | |
| Round banks where Tyne is born. | |
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| The Wansbeck sings with all her springs, | 65 |
| The bents and braes give ear; | |
| But the wood that rings wi’ the sang she sings | |
| I may not see nor hear; | |
| For far and far thae blithe burns are, | |
| And strange is a’ thing near. | 70 |
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| The light there lightens, the day there brightens, | |
| The loud wind there lives free: | |
| Nae light comes nigh me or wind blaws by me | |
| That I wad hear or see. | |
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| But O gin I were there again, | 75 |
| Afar ayont the faem, | |
| Cauld and dead in the sweet saft bed | |
| That haps my sires at hame! | |
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| We’ll see nae mair the sea-banks fair, | |
| And the sweet grey gleaming sky, | 80 |
| And the lordly strand of Northumberland, | |
| And the goodly towers thereby: | |
| And none shall know but the winds that blow | |
| The graves wherein we lie. | |
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