Around us all nature lay wrapt
up in peace,
Nor noise could
our pleasures annoy,
Save Cartha’s hoarse
brawling, convey’d by the breeze,
That soothed us
to love and to joy.
If haply some youth had his
passion express’d,
And praised the
bright charms of her face,
What horrors unceasing revolved
though my breast,
While, sighing,
I stole from the place!
For where is the eye that
could view her alone,
The ear that could
list to her strain,
Nor wish the adorable nymph
for his own,
Nor double the
pangs I sustain?
Thou moon, that now brighten’st
those regions above,
How oft hast thou
witness’d my bliss,
While breathing my tender
expressions of love,
I seal’d
each kind vow with a kiss!
Ah, then, how I joy’d
while I gazed on her charms!
What transports
flew swift through my heart!
I press’d the dear,
beautiful maid in my arms,
Nor dream’d
that we ever should part.
But now from the dear, from
the tenderest maid,
By fortune unfeelingly
torn;
’Midst strangers, who
wonder to see me so sad,
In secret I wander
forlorn.
And oft, while drear Midnight
assembles her shades,
And Silence pours
sleep from her throne,
Pale, lonely, and pensive,
I steal through the glades,
And sigh, ’midst
the darkness, my moan.
In vain to the town I retreat
for relief,
In vain to the
groves I complain;
Belles, coxcombs, and uproar,
can ne’er soothe my grief,
And solitude nurses
my pain.
Still absent from her whom
my bosom loves best,
I languish in
mis’ry and care;
Her presence could banish
each woe from my heart,
But her absence,
alas! is despair.
Ye dark rugged rocks, that
recline o’er the deep;
Ye breezes, that
sigh o’er the main—
Oh, shelter me under your
cliffs while I weep,
And cease while
ye hear me complain!
Far distant, alas! from my
dear native shore,
And far from each
friend now I be;
And wide is the merciless
ocean that roars
Between my Matilda
and me.
AUCHTERTOOL.[43]
From the village of Leslie,
with a heart full of glee,
And my pack on my shoulders,
I rambled out free,
Resolved that same evening,
as Luna was full,
To lodge, ten miles distant,
in old Auchtertool.
Through many a lone cottage
and farm-house I steer’d,
Took their money, and off
with my budget I sheer’d;
The road I explored out, without
form or rule,
Still asking the nearest to
old Auchtertool.
At length I arrived at the
edge of the town,
As Phoebus, behind a high
mountain, went down;
The clouds gather’d
dreary, and weather blew foul,
And I hugg’d myself
safe now in old Auchtertool.