Untouch'd by Society's spell?

Though thy children, old Albyn! adversity bear,
As forlorn o'er thy mountains they roam,
Yet I 've found, what in vain I should seek for elsewhere--
I have found 'mong these mountains a home.

How lovely the beam on thy moorland appears,
As it streams from the eye of the morn!
And how comely the garment that evening wears
When the day of its glories is shorn!

Ah! strong are the ties that the patriot bind,
Fair isle of the sea! to thy shore;
The turf that he treads, by the best of their kind,
By the bravest, was trodden before.

Nor is there a field--not a foot of thy soil,
In dale or in mountain-land dun,
Unmark'd in the annals of chivalrous toil,
Ere concord its conquest had won.

The rill hath a voice from the rock as it pours,
It comes from the glen on the gale,
For the life-blood of martyrs hath hallow'd thy muirs,
And their names are revered in the vale.

How sacred the stone that, remote on the heath,
O'er the bones of the righteous was laid,
Who triumph'd in death o'er the foes of their faith,
When the banner of truth was display'd!

And sweet are the songs of the land of my love,
And soothing their tones to the soul,
Or lofty and loud, like the thunder above,
Or the storm-cloud of passion, they roll.

While summer, beyond the Atlantic's wide waste,
A gaudier garb may assume,
My country! thou boastest the verdure of taste,
And thy glories immortally bloom.

No! I will not forsake thee, thou land of my lay!
The scorn of the stranger to brave;
O'er thy lea I have revell'd in youth's sunny ray,
And thy wild-flowers shall spangle my grave.

THOMAS PRINGLE.

Thomas Pringle was born on the 5th of January 1789 at Blaiklaw, in
Teviotdale, a farm rented by his father, and of which his progenitors
had been tenants for a succession of generations. By an accident in
infancy, he suffered dislocation of one of his limbs, which rendered the
use of crutches necessary for life. Attending the grammar school of
Kelso for three years, he entered as a student the University of
Edinburgh. From his youth he had devoted himself to extensive reading,
and during his attendance at college he formed the resolution of
adopting literature as a profession. In 1808 he accepted the appointment
of copying-cler