| |
| LONE on the bleaky hills the straying flocks | |
| Shun the fierce storms among the sheltering rocks; | |
| Down from the rivulets, red with dashing rains, | |
| The gathering floods burst o’er the distant plains; | |
| Beneath the blast the leafless forests groan; | 5 |
| The hollow caves return a hollow moan. | |
| Ye hills, ye plains, ye forests, and ye caves, | |
| Ye howling winds, and wintry swelling waves! | |
| Unheard, unseen, by human ear or eye, | |
| Sad to your sympathetic glooms I fly; | 10 |
| Where, to the whistling blast and water’s roar, | |
| Pale Scotia’s recent wound I may deplore. | |
| |
| O heavy loss, thy country ill could bear! | |
| A loss these evil days can ne’er repair! | |
| Justice, the high vicegerent of her God, | 15 |
| Her doubtful balance eyed, and sway’d her rod: | |
| Hearing the tidings of the fatal blow, | |
| She sank, abandon’d to the wildest woe. | |
| |
| Wrongs, injuries, from many a darksome den, | |
| Now, gay in hope, explore the paths of men: | 20 |
| See from his cavern grim Oppression rise, | |
| And throw on Poverty his cruel eyes; | |
| Keen on the helpless victim see him fly, | |
| And stifle, dark, the feebly-bursting cry: | |
| Mark Ruffian Violence, distained with crimes, | 25 |
| Rousing elate in these degenerate times, | |
| View unsuspecting Innocence a prey, | |
| As guileful Fraud points out the erring way: | |
| While subtle Litigation’s pliant tongue | |
| The life-blood equal sucks of Right and Wrong: | 30 |
| Hark, injur’d Want recounts th’ unlisten’d tale, | |
| And much-wrong’d Mis’ry pours the unpitied wail! | |
| |
| Ye dark waste hills, ye brown unsightly plains, | |
| Congenial scenes, ye soothe my mournful strains: | |
| Ye tempests, rage! ye turbid torrents, roll! | 35 |
| Ye suit the joyless tenor of my soul. | |
| Life’s social haunts and pleasures I resign; | |
| Be nameless wilds and lonely wanderings mine, | |
| To mourn the woes my country must endure— | |
| That would degenerate ages cannot cure. | 40 |
| |
