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MY PEGGY'S CHARMS

Let Bourbon exult in his gay gilded lilies,
And England triumphant display her proud rose:
A fairer than either adorns the green valleys,
Where Devon, sweet Devon, meandering flows.

1 Written

Chalmers.

Braving angry Winter's Storms.1

Tune-"Neil Gow's Lament for Abercairny."

WHERE, braving angry winter's storms,
The lofty Ochils rise,

Far in their shade my Peggy's charms
First blest my wondering eyes;
As one who by some savage stream
A lonely gem surveys,
Astonish'd, doubly marks it beam
With art's most polish'd blaze.

Blest be the wild, sequester'd shade,
And blest the day and hour,
Where Peggy's charms I first survey'd,
When first I felt their pow'r!
The tyrant Death, with grim control,
May seize my fleeting breath;
But tearing Peggy from my soul
Must be a stronger death.

Song-My Peggy's Charms.

Tune-"Tha a' chailleach air mo dheigh."

My Peggy's face, my Peggy's form,
The frost of hermit Age might warm;
My Peggy's worth, my Peggy's mind,
Might charm the first of human kind.

for Miss Margaret Both she and Miss Hamilton were probably friends rather than "flames" of Burns.

2 Again Miss Chalmers inspires the minstrel.

THE YOUNG HIGHLAND ROVER

1 The

I love my Peggy's angel air,
Her face so truly heavenly fair,
Her native grace, so void of art,
But I adore my Peggy's heart.

The lily's hue, the rose's dye,
The kindling lustre of an eye;
Who but owns their magic sway!
Who but knows they all decay!

The tender thrill, the pitying tear,
The generous purpose nobly dear,
The gentle look that rage disarms—
These are all Immortal charms.

The young Highland Rover.1

Tune-"Morag."

LOUD blaw the frosty breezes,

The snaws the mountains cover;
Like winter on me seizes,

Since my young Highland rover
Far wanders nations over.
Where'er he go, where'er he stray,
May heaven be his warden;
Return him safe to fair Strathspey,
And bonie Castle-Gordon !

The trees now naked groaning,
Shall soon wi' leaves be hinging,
The birdies dowie moaning,
Shall a' be blythely singing,
And every flower be springing;

Rover is Prince Charles;
Burns, as we saw, had visited Castle
Gordon. Every one knows:-
"Send us Lewie Gordon hame

And the lad I daurna name !"
Lewie Gordon was third son of the
Duke of Gordon, and defeated a
Hanoverian force at Inverury. The

"mighty Warden" is often appealed to
in genuine Jacobite songs, as Hame,
Hame, Hame, in the old version, and
Langsyne (1746)—

"Yet he who did proud Pharaoh crush,
To save old Jacob's line,
Will visit Charlie in the bush,
Like Moses langsyne."

BIRTHDAY ODE

Sae I'll rejoice the lee-lang day,
When by his mighty Warden
My youth's return'd to fair Strathspey,
And bonie Castle-Gordon.

Birthday Ode for 31st December 1787.1

AFAR the illustrious Exile roams,

Whom kingdoms on this day should hail;
An inmate in the casual shed,

On transient pity's bounty fed,

Haunted by busy memory's bitter tale!
Beasts of the forest have their savage homes,
But He, who should imperial purple wear,
Owns not the lap of earth where rests his royal head!
His wretched refuge, dark despair,
While ravening wrongs and woes pursue,
And distant far the faithful few

Who would his sorrows share.

False flatterer, Hope, away!

Nor think to lure us as in days of yore:
We solemnize this sorrowing natal day,
To prove our loyal truth-we can no more,
And owning Heaven's mysterious sway,
Submissive, low adore.

Ye honored, mighty Dead,

Who nobly perished in the glorious cause,
Your KING, your Country, and her laws,
From great DUNDEE, who smiling Victory led,
And fell a Martyr in her arms,

(What breast of northern ice but warms!)

1 This piece has a melancholy interest. The greatest of Scottish poets wrote the last Birthday Ode for the last hope of the Stuart line. In a month the king was dead, and only "a barren stock," the Cardinal Duke of York, survived. Poor as the verses are, for the most part, the praise of "Great Dundee " severs Burns from

the inheritors of Covenanting and Cameronian traditions, and ranges him with Scott.

The text is from the Glenriddell MS. Currie printed only the second paragraph, as far as "So Vengeance. where political considerations stopped him.

BIRTHDAY ODE

To bold BALMERINO's undying name,

Whose soul of fire, lighted at Heaven's high flame, Deserves the proudest wreath departed heroes claim: Not unrevenged your fate shall lie,

It only lags, the fatal hour,

Your blood shall, with incessant cry,
Awake at last, th' unsparing Power;
As from the cliff, with thundering course,
The snowy ruin smokes along

With doubling speed and gathering force,

Till deep it, crushing, whelms the cottage in the vale; So Vengeance' arm, ensanguin'd, strong,

Shall with resistless might assail,

Usurping Brunswick's pride shall lay,

And STEWART's wrongs and yours, with tenfold weight repay.

PERDITION, baleful child of night!
Rise and revenge the injured right
Of STEWART's royal race:
Lead on the unmuzzled hounds of hell,
Till all the frighted echoes tell

The blood-notes of the chase!
Full on the quarry point their view,
Full on the base usurping crew,
The tools of faction, and the nation's curse!
Hark how the cry grows on the wind;
They leave the lagging gale behind,
Their savage fury, pitiless, they pour;
With murdering eyes already they devour;
See Brunswick spent, a wretched prey,
His life one poor despairing day,

Where each avenging hour still ushers in a worse!
Such havock, howling all abroad,

Their utter ruin bring,

The base apostates to their GOD,
Or rebels to their KING.

DEATH OF ROBERT DUNDAS

On the Death of Robert Dundas, Esq.,
of Arniston,

Late Lord President of the Court of Session.1

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;
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;
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,
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:
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,
Rousing elate in these degenerate times,

1 Burns's letter to Alexander Cunningham gives the history of this elegy. He does not reflect that the moment of a father's death is likely to find a son occupied with so many duties that a mortuary poem may

escape notice and reply. Carlyle's unanswered letter to Scott is a parallel and equally intelligible grievance, though probably not felt with an equal passion of bitterness.

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