O happy love! where love like this is found: 
     O heart-felt raptures! bliss beyond compare! 
     I’ve paced much this weary, mortal round,
     And sage experience bids me this declare,—­
     “If Heaven a draught of heavenly pleasure spare—­
     One cordial in this melancholy vale,
     ’Tis when a youthful, loving, modest pair
     In other’sarms, breathe out the tender tale,
     Beneath the milk-white thorn that scents the evening gale.”

     Is there, in human form, that bears a heart,
     A wretch! a villain! lost to love and truth! 
     That can, with studied, sly, ensnaring art,
     Betray sweet Jenny’s unsuspecting youth? 
     Curse on his perjur’d arts! dissembling smooth! 
     Are honour, virtue, conscience, all exil’d? 
     Is there no pity, no relenting ruth,
     Points to the parents fondling o’er their child? 
     Then paints the ruin’d maid, and their distraction wild?

     But now the supper crowns their simple board,
     The halesome parritch, chief of Scotia’s food;
     The sowp their only hawkie does afford,
     That, ’yont the hallan snugly chows her cood: 
     The dame brings forth, in complimental mood,
     To grace the lad, her weel-hain’d kebbuck, fell;
     And aft he’s prest, and aft he ca’s it guid: 
     The frugal wifie, garrulous, will tell
     How t’was a towmond auld, sin’ lint was i’ the bell.

     The cheerfu’ supper done, wi’ serious face,
     They, round the ingle, form a circle wide;
     The sire turns o’er, with patriarchal grace,
     The big ha’bible, ance his father’s pride: 
     His bonnet rev’rently is laid aside,
     His lyart haffets wearing thin and bare;
     Those strains that once did sweet in Zion glide,
     He wales a portion with judicious care;
     And “Let us worship God!” he says with solemn air.

     They chant their artless notes in simple guise,
     They tune their hearts, by far the noblest aim;
     Perhaps Dundee’s wild-warbling measures rise;
     Or plaintive Martyrs, worthy of the name;
     Or noble Elgin beets the heaven-ward flame;
     The sweetest far of Scotia’s holy lays: 
     Compar’d with these, Italian trills are tame;
     The tickl’d ears no heart-felt raptures raise;
     Nae unison hae they with our Creator’s praise.

     The priest-like father reads the sacred page,
     How Abram was the friend of God on high;
     Or Moses bade eternal warfare wage
     With Amalek’s ungracious progeny;
     Or how the royal bard did groaning lie
     Beneath the stroke of Heaven’s avenging ire;
     Or Job’s pathetic plaint, and wailing cry;
     Or rapt Isaiah’s wild, seraphic fire;
     Or other holy seers that tune the sacred lyre.