Daniel Wilson (1816–1892)

OH, to be in Scotland now,

When the yellow autumn smiles

So pleasantly on knoll and how;

Where from rugged cliff and heathy brow

Of each mountain height you look down defiles

Golden with the harvest’s glow.

Oh, to be in the kindly land,

Whether mellow autumn smiles or no.

It is well if the joyous reaper stand

Breast-deep in the yellow corn, sickle in hand;

But I care not though sleety east winds blow,

So long as I tread its strand.

To be wandering there at will,

Be it sunshine or rain, or its winds that brace;

To climb the old familiar hill;

Of the storied landscape to drink my fill,

And look out on the grey old town at its base,

And linger a dreamer still.

Ah! weep ye not for the dead,

The dear ones safe in their native earth;

There fond hands pillowed the narrow bed

Where fresh gowans, starlike, above their head

Spangle the turf of each spring’s new birth

For the living, loving tread.

Ah! not for them; doubly blest,

Safely home, and past all weeping;

Hushed and still, there closely pressed

Kith to kin on one mother’s breast

All still, securely, trustfully sleeping,

As in their first cradled rest.

Weep rather, aye, weep sore,

For him who departs to a distant land.

There are pleasant homes on the far-off shore;

Friends too, but not like the friends of yore

That fondly, but vainly, beckoning stand

For him who returns no more.

Oh, to lie in Scottish earth,

Lapped in the clods of its kindly soil;

Where the soaring laverock’s song has birth

In the welkin’s blue, and its heavenward mirth

Lends a rapture to earth-born toil—

What matter! Death recks not the dearth.