The Book of Scottish Song/While frequent on Tweed
While frequent on Tweed.
[Written by the Rev. John Logan, at one time a clergyman in Leith, but who spent the latter years of his life as a literary adventurer in London. He was born in 1748, and died in 1788.]
While frequent on Tweed and on Tay,
Their harps all the muses have strung,
Should a river more limpid than they,
The wood-fringed Esk flow unsung?
While Nelly and Nancy inspire
The poet with pastoral strains,
Why silent the voice of the lyre
On Mary, the pride of the plains?
O nature's most beautiful bloom
May flourish unseen and unknown:
And the shadows of solitude gloom
A form that might shine on a throne.
Through the wilderness blossoms the rose,
In sweetness retired from the sight;
And Philomel warbles her woes
Alone to the ear of the night.
How often the beauty is hid
Amid shades that her triumphs deny!
How often the hero forbid
From the path that conducts to the sky!
A Helen has pined in the grove;
A Homer has wanted his name;
Useen in the circle of love,
Unknown to the temple of fame.
Yet let us walk forth to the stream,
Where poet ne'er wander'd before;
Enamour'd of Mary's sweet name,
How the echoes will spread to the shore!
If the voice of the muse be divine,
Thy beauties shall live in my lay;
While reflecting the forest so fine,
Sweet Esk o'er the valleys shall stray.