| |
| NOW Nature hangs her mantle green | |
| On every blooming tree, | |
| And spreads her sheets o’ daisies white | |
| Out o’er the grassy lea; | |
| Now Phoebus cheers the crystal streams, | 5 |
| And glads the azure skies; | |
| But nought can glad the weary wight | |
| That fast in durance lies. | |
| |
| Now laverocks wake the merry morn | |
| Aloft on dewy wing; | 10 |
| The merle, in his noontide bow’r, | |
| Makes woodland echoes ring; | |
| The mavis wild wi’ mony a note, | |
| Sings drowsy day to rest: | |
| In love and freedom they rejoice, | 15 |
| Wi’ care nor thrall opprest. | |
| |
| Now blooms the lily by the bank, | |
| The primrose down the brae; | |
| The hawthorn’s budding in the glen, | |
| And milk-white is the slae: | 20 |
| The meanest hind in fair Scotland | |
| May rove their sweets amang; | |
| But I, the Queen of a’ Scotland, | |
| Maun lie in prison strang. | |
| |
| I was the Queen o’ bonie France, | 25 |
| Where happy I hae been; | |
| Fu’ lightly raise I in the morn, | |
| As blythe lay down at e’en: | |
| And I’m the sov’reign of Scotland, | |
| And mony a traitor there; | 30 |
| Yet here I lie in foreign bands, | |
| And never-ending care. | |
| |
| But as for thee, thou false woman, | |
| My sister and my fae, | |
| Grim Vengeance yet shall whet a sword | 35 |
| That thro’ thy soul shall gae; | |
| The weeping blood in woman’s breast | |
| Was never known to thee; | |
| Nor th’ balm that draps on wounds of woe | |
| Frae woman’s pitying e’e. | 40 |
| |
| My son! my son! may kinder stars | |
| Upon thy fortune shine; | |
| And may those pleasures gild thy reign, | |
| That ne’er wad blink on mine! | |
| God keep thee frae thy mother’s faes, | 45 |
| Or turn their hearts to thee: | |
| And where thou meet’st thy mother’s friend, | |
| Remember him for me! | |
| |
| O! soon, to me, may Summer suns | |
| Nae mair light up the morn! | 50 |
| Nae mair to me the Autumn winds | |
| Wave o’er the yellow corn? | |
| And, in the narrow house of death, | |
| Let Winter round me rave; | |
| And the next flow’rs that deck the Spring, | 55 |
| Bloom on my peaceful grave! | |
| |
