Page:The Book of Scottish Song.djvu/338

320 Bonnie Mary Halliday,

Turn again, I tell you;

For wit, and grace, and loveliness,

What maidens may excel you?

Though Annan has its beauteous dames,

And Corrie many a fair one,

We canna want thee from our sight,

Thou lovely and thou rare one.

Bonnie Mary Halliday,

When the bittern’s sounding,

We'll miss thy lightsome lily foot

Amang the blythe lads bounding.

The summer sun shall freeze our veins,

The winter moon shall warm us,

Ere the like of thee shall come again

To cheer us and to charm us.

[.—Dr. Leyden was the friend of Sir Walter Scott, and of great service to him in collecting his border ballads. He latterly distinguished himself as an oriental scholar, and died in Java in 1811.]

sweet thy modest light to view,

Fair star! to love and lovers dear;

While trembling on the falling dew,

Like beauty shining through the tear.

Or hanging o'er that mirror-stream

To mark each image trembling there,

Thou seem'st to smile with softer gleam

To see thy lovely face so fair.

Though, blazing o'er the arch of night,

The moon thy timid beams outshine:

As far as thine each starry light—

Her rays can never vie with thine.

Thine are the soft enchanting hours

When twilight lingers on the plain,

And whispers to the closing flow'rs,

That soon the sun will rise again.

Thine is the breeze that, murmuring bland

As music, wafts the lover's sigh;

And bids the yielding heart expand

In lore's delicious ecstasy.

Fair star! though I be doom'd to prove

That rapture's tears are mix'd with pain;

Ah! still I feel 'tis sweet to love,—

But sweeter to be lov'd again.

not of love to one whose breast

Is icy cold to idle joy;

Whose passions long have sunk to rest,

And chase no more the phantom toy.

Yet I have felt the maddening force

Of fickle love and passion's sway,

And run delirium's frenzied course

When love and pleasure led the way.

And I have watch'd the bosom's swell

That speaks of passion uncontroll'd,

And gaz'd on sparkling eyes, that tell

What virgin fears would not unfold.

And I have snatch'd the balmy kiss

From ruby lips where love might play,

And prest the downy breast of bliss,

And sigh'd my very soul away.

Yes, I have run love's maddening race

As more than worlds had been the stake,

My feelings wearied in the chase,

Have slumber'd never more to wake.

And now, though recollection shed

A ray of mem'ry o'er my brain,

It brings the trace of time long fled,

Without the pleasure or the pain.

[ by, a shoemaker in Perth, who latterly taught drawing. He died in 1815, aged 35.—Tune, "Erin go Bragh."]

you weep for the woes of poor wandering Nelly?

I love you for that, but of love now no more,

All I had long ago lies entomb'd with my Billy,

Whose grave rises green on Corunna's lone shore.