rus, all chanting together--
The blue-bells of Scotland, the Scottish blue-bells.
Then strike the loud harp to the land of the river,
The mountain, the valley, with all their wild spells,
And shout in the chorus for ever and ever--
The blue-bells of Scotland, the Scottish blue-bells.
ROBERT MILLER.
Robert Miller, the author of the two following songs, was a native of
Glasgow, and was educated for the legal profession. He contributed
verses to the periodicals, but did not venture on any separate
publication. He died at Glasgow, in September 1834, at the early age of
twenty-four. His "Lay of the Hopeless" was written within a few days of
his decease.
WHERE ARE THEY?
The loved of early days!
Where are they?--where?
Not on the shining braes,
The mountains bare;--
Not where the regal streams
Their foam-bells cast--
Where childhood's time of dreams
And sunshine pass'd.
Some in the mart, and some
In stately halls,
With the ancestral gloom
Of ancient walls;
Some where the tempest sweeps
The desert waves;
Some where the myrtle weeps
On Roman graves.
And pale young faces gleam
With solemn eyes;
Like a remember'd dream
The dead arise;
In the red track of war
The restless sweep;
In sunlit graves afar
The loved ones sleep.
The braes are dight with flowers,
The mountain streams
Foam past me in the showers
Of sunny gleams;
But the light hearts that cast
A glory there,
In the rejoicing past,
Where are they?--where?
LAY OF THE HOPELESS.
Oh! would that the wind that is sweeping now
O'er the restless and weary wave,
Were swaying the leaves of the cypress bough
O'er the calm of my early grave--
And my heart with its pulses of fire and life,
Oh! would it were still as stone.
I am weary, weary, of all the strife,
And the selfish world I 've known.
I 've drunk up bliss from a mantling cup,
When youth and joy were mine;
But the cold black dregs are floating up,
Instead of the laughing wine;
And life hath lost its loveliness,
And youth hath spent its hour,
And pleasure palls like bitterness,
And hope hath not a flower.
And love! was it not a glorious eye
That smiled on my early dream?
It is clos
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