Page:Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry - 1887.djvu/145

Rh For faded friendship need I sigh,

Or love's warm raptures long flown by,

When fancy sits and fondly frames

Her angels out of soulless dames?

Sick of ripe lips and sagemen's rules,

The faith of knaves and fash of fools;

And scorning that, and loathing this,

My mind to me my kingdom is.

The Muse with laureled brow in vain

Sweeps by me with her visioned train;

I've bowed my head and ruled my hand

Too long beneath her magic wand.

Shall I go shrouded to my hearse,

Full of the folly of vain verse?

I'll court some soberer, surer bliss;

My mind to me my kingdom is.

"Something in the song of Mungo Macubin had awakened a train of thought of a nature too soft for his present hazardous calling; his looks darkened down in a kind of moody sorrow, and I could imagine that retrospection was busy with him. He observed the interest which my looks testified I took in his fate, took me by the hand with much kindness, and said, in a mingled tone of bitterness and sorrow: 'I have often thought that we have less control over our fate than we ought, and that an evil destiny dogs us through life, and pursues us to perdition. Take counsel, I beseech ye, from my words, and warning from my conduct; this shealing contains a being whose fate may be a text for you to preach from till these black locks grow grey. Listen, and then say with the Word, "Surely one vessel is made for honour, and another for dishonour." All I have cherished, or loved, or looked with kindness upon, have passed away, departed, and sunk to death or dishonour; and all I have saved from the stream of destiny is the wretched wreck on which you look. I beheld men of dull and untutorable intellects blessed and doubly blessed. I saw the portion of folly growing as lordly as the inheritance of wisdom, and I said, in the vanity of my heart, shall I not also be beloved and happy? But man's success is not of his own shaping: my cattle died, my crops failed, my means perished, and one I loved dearly forgot me; I could have forgiven that—she forgot herself. I have nothing now to solace or cheer me; I look forward without hope, and the present moment is so miserable that I seek to forget myself in the company