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The Book of Scottish Song/Where are they

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2269036The Book of Scottish Song — Where are they1843Alexander Whitelaw

Where are they.

[Robert Miller.]

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 past.

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 bright 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?