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(From The Lay of the Last Minstrel)
BREATHES there the man, with soul so dead, | |
| Who never to himself hath said, | |
| This is my own, my native land! | |
| Whose heart hath ne’er within him burned, | |
| As home his footsteps he hath turned, | 5 |
| From wandering on a foreign strand! | |
| If such there breathe, go, mark him well; | |
| For him no minstrel raptures swell; | |
| High though his titles, proud his name, | |
| Boundless his wealth as wish can claim; | 10 |
| Despite those titles, power, and pelf, | |
| The wretch, concentred all in self, | |
| Living, shall forfeit fair renown, | |
| And, doubly dying, shall go down | |
| To the vile dust from whence he sprung, | 15 |
| Unwept, unhonored, and unsung. | |
| O Caledonia! stern and wild, | |
| Meet nurse for a poetic child! | |
| Land of brown heath and shaggy wood, | |
| Land of the mountain and the flood, | 20 |
| Land of my sires! what mortal hand | |
| Can e’er untie the filial band | |
| That knits me to thy rugged strand? | |
| Still, as I view each well-known scene, | |
| Think what is now and what hath been, | 25 |
| Seems as, to me, of all bereft, | |
| Sole friends thy woods and streams were left, | |
| And thus I love them better still, | |
| Even in extremity of ill. | |
| By Yarrow’s stream still let me stray, | 30 |
| Though none should guide my feeble way, | |
| Still feel the breeze down Ettrick break, | |
| Although it chill my withered cheek; | |
| Still lay my head by Teviot stone, | |
| Though there, forgotten and alone, | 35 |
| The bard may draw his parting groan. | |
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