Here, foaming down the shelvy rocks,
In twisting strength I rin;
There, high my boiling torrent smokes,
Wild roaring o'er a linn:
Enjoying large each spring and well,
As Nature gave them me,

I am, although I say't mysel',
Worth gaun a mile to see.

The sober laverock, warbling wild,
Shall to the skies aspire;

Would then my noble master please
To grant my highest wishes,
He'll shade my banks wi' towering trees,
And bonny spreading bushes.
Delighted doubly then, my lord,
You'll wander on my banks,
And listen monie a grateful bird
Return you tuneful thanks.

cascade

This, too, a covert shall insure

To shield them from the storm; And coward maukin sleep secure,

lark

The gowdspink, Music's gayest child, goldfinch Shall sweetly join the choir:

thrush

The blackbird strong, the lintwhite clear, linnet
The mavis mild and mellow,
The robin pensive autumn cheer,
In all her locks of yellow.

hare

Low in her grassy form. Here shall the shepherd make his seat, To weave his crown of flowers; Or find a sheltering safe retreat

From prone descending showers.

And here, by sweet endearing stealth,
Shall meet the loving pair,
Despising worlds with all their wealth
As empty idle care.

The flowers shall vie in all their charms
The hour of heaven to grace,
And birks extend their fragrant arms
To screen the dear embrace.

Here haply too, at vernal dawn,

Some musing bard may stray,
And eye the smoking, dewy lawn,
And misty mountain gray;
Or by the reaper's nightly beam,

Mild-chequering through the trees,
Rave to my darkly dashing stream,
Hoarse swelling on the breeze.

Let lofty firs, and ashes cool,
My lowly banks o'erspread,
And view, deep bending in the pool,
Their shadows' watery bed!

Let fragrant birks in woodbines drest
My craggy cliffs adorn;

And, for the little songster's nest,
The close embowering thorn.

So may old Scotia's darling hope,
Your little angel band,

Spring, like their fathers, up to prop
Their honoured native land!

So may, through Albion's farthest ken,
To social-flowing glasses,

The grace be-"Athole's honest men,
And Athole's bonny lasses!"

VERSES

WRITTEN WHILE STANDING BY THE FALL OF FYERS, NEAR LOCH NESS.

AMONG the heathy hills and ragged woods,
The foaming Fyers pours his mossy floods;
Till full he dashes on the rocky mounds,
Where, through a shapeless breach, his stream
resounds.

As high in air the bursting torrents flow,
As deep recoiling surges foam below;

Prone down the rock the whitening sheet de

scends,

And viewless Echo's ear, astonished, rends.

Dim seen, through rising mists and ceaseless

showers,

The hoary cavern, wide surrounding, lowers; Still through the gap the struggling river toils, And still below, the horrid caldron boils

*

*

CASTLE-GORDON.

*

Designed to be sung to Morag, a Highland tune, of which Burns was extremely fond. CURRIE.

Spicy forests, ever gay,
Shading from the burning ray

Helpless wretches sold to toil,
Or the ruthless native's way,

STREAMS that glide in Orient plains,
Never bound by Winter's chains;

Glowing here on golden sands,
There commixed with foulest stains,

From tyranny's empurpled bands ;
These, their richly-gleaming waves,
I leave to tyrants and their slaves;
Give me the stream that sweetly laves
The banks by Castle-Gordon.

Bent on, slaughter, blood, and spoil;
Woods that ever verdant wave,

I leave the tyrant and the slave;
Give me the groves that lofty brave
The storms by Castle-Gordon.

Wildly here, without control,
Nature reigns and rules the whole;
In that sober, pensive mood,
Dearest to the feeling soul,

She plants the forest, pours the flood.
Life's poor day I'll musing rave,
And find at night a sheltering cave,
Where waters flow and wild woods wave,
By bonny Castle-Gordon.

THE BONNY LASS OF ALBANY.

TUNE- Mary's Dream.

Journeying through the Highlands with a Jacobite companion, Burns could not but feel a little more enthusiastic than he generally did regarding the memory of the Stuarts. His visit to the natal district of those ancestors whom he believed to have followed the Cavalier standard, would give increased energy to his feelings of romantic loyalty. Connecting these considerations with the fact of Prince Charles having this very month, [Sept. 1787] declared the legitimacy of his hitherto supposed natural daughter, styled Duchess