The Book of Scottish Song/The Scotsman's Farewell

The Scotsman's Farewell.

[John Burns.]

Let me gaze on those mountains, with heath overgrown,
⁠'Mid whose wild flowers I sported, ere sorrow I knew;
Let me leave them one tear, ere my bark shall be thrown
⁠O'er the wave that may hide them for ever from view!

Though I go to a land as enchanting and fair—
⁠That has comforts as many, and troubles as few—
Where the heart, all it pants for, as freely may share,
⁠And find its attachments as tender and true—

Yet the place of our birth, like our earliest love,
⁠To the throb of affection must ever be dear;—
And kind, or severe, as our fortune may prove,
⁠We look back on that spot—with a smile—or a tear

Oh yes! there's no loadstone that equals our home,
⁠Nor magnet so true as the pulse of the heart:—
And the mem'ry of boyhood, where'er we may roam,
⁠Sheds a ray o'er the mind that will never depart.

Farewell, Caledonia! thou first in contending
⁠Against the oppressors of freedom and truth—
May I fall like my fathers—thy blessings defending—
⁠And sleep 'neath the turf I have trod in my youth!

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