Classic Poem

All Scottish legends did his fancy fashion,
—All airs that richly flow,
Laughing with frolic, tremulous with passion,
—Broken with love-lorn woe;

Ballads whose beauties years have long been stealing
—And left few links of gold,
Under his quaint and subtle touch of healing
—Grew fairer, not less old.

Gray Cluden, and the vestal's choral cadence,
—His spell awoke therewith;
Till boatmen hung their oars to hear the maidens
—Upon the banks of Nith.

His, too, the strains of battle nobly coming
—From Bruce, or Wallace wight,
Such as the Highlander shall oft be humming
—Before some famous fight.

Nor only these—for him the hawthorn hoary
—Was with new wreaths enwrought,
The “crimson-tippèd daisy” wore fresh glory,
—Born of poetic thought.

From the “wee cowering beastie” he could borrow
—A moral strain sublime,
A noble tenderness of human sorrow,
—In wondrous wealth of rhyme.

Oh, but the mountain breeze must have been pleasant
—Upon the sunburnt brow
Of that poetic and triumphant peasant
—Driving his laureled plow!