The time shall come, when I, perhaps, may tread Or o'er your mountains creep, in awful gloom! Where Jonson sat in Drummond's classic shade; Or crop, from Tiviotdale, each lyric flower, And mourn on Yarrow's banks, where Willie's laid! Meantime, ye powers that on the plains which bore The cordial youth, on Lothian's plains, attend! Where'er Home dwells, on hill, or lowly moor, To him I lose, your kind protection lend, And, touched with love like mine, preserve my absent friend! Line 2d, Vallies. Line 6th, Ben Jonson paid a visit on foot, in 1619, to the Scots poet Drummond, at his seat of Hawthornden, within four miles of Edinburgh. Line 10th, Barrow, it seems, was at the Edinburgh university, which is in the county of Lothian.⚫ XXXI. ADDITIONAL STANZAS. W. ERSKINE. THY muse may tell, how, when at evening's close, In merry There, on a streamlet's margin as she lies, Chaunting some carol till her swain appears, With visage deadly pale, in pensive guise, Beneath a wither'd fir his form he rears! Line 8th, The wraith, or spectral appearance of a person shortly to die. Shrieking and sad, she bends her irie flight, When, mid dire heaths, where flits the taper blue, The whilst the moon sheds dim a sickly light, The airy funeral meets her blasted view! When, trembling, weak, she gains her cottage low, Let these sad strains to lighter sounds give place! For see! recall'd by thy resistless lay, Once more the Brownie shews his honest face. Hail, from thy wanderings long, my much lov'd sprite! Tell, in what realms thou sport'st thy merry night, With early voice to drowsy workman call, Or lull the dame, while Mirth his vigils keeps ? 'Twas thus in Caledonia's domes, 'tis said, Thou ply'dst the kindly task in years of yore: At last, in luckless hour, some erring maid Spread in thy nightly cell of viands store: Ne'er was thy form beheld among their mountains more. Then wake (for well thou can'st) that wond'rous lay, How, while around the thoughtless matrons sleep, Soft o'er the floor the treacherous fairies creep, How starts the nurse, when, for her lovely child, O snatch the innocent from demons vilde, And save the parents fond from fell despair! In a deep cave the trusty menials wait, When from their hilly dens, at midnight's hour, Forth rush the airy elves in mimic state, And o'er the moon-light heath with swiftness scour: In glittering arms the little horsemen shine; |