Hunter's Song

THE toils are pitched, and the stakes are set,

Ever sing merrily, merrily;

The bows they bend, and the knives they whet,

Hunters live so cheerily.

It was a stag, a stag of ten,

Bearing its branches sturdily;

He came silently down the glen,

Ever sing hardily, hardily.

It was there he met with a wounded doe,

She was bleeding deathfully;

She warned him of the toils below,

O so faithfully, faithfully!

He had an eye, and he could heed,

Ever sing so warily, warily;

He had a foot, and he could speed--

Hunters watch so narrowly.

Sir Walter Scott

Motto

from Rob Roy XXXVI

FAREWELL to the land where the clouds love to rest,

Like the shroud of the dead on the mountain's cold breast;

To the cataract's roar where the eagles reply,

And the lake her lone bosom expands to the sky.

Sir Walter Scott

On Leaving Mrs. Brown's Lodgings

SO goodbye, Mrs. Brown,

I am going out of town,

Over dale, over down,

Where bugs bite not,

Where lodgers fight not,

Where below your chairmen drink not,

Where beside your gutters stink not;

But all is fresh and clean and gay,

And merry lambkins sport and play,

And they toss with rakes uncommonly short hay,

Which looks as if it had been sown only the other day,

And where oats are twenty-five shillings a boll, they say;

But all's one for that, since I must and will away.

Sir Walter Scott

Breathes There the Man

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 burn'd,

As home his footsteps he hath turn'd

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;

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,

Unwept, unhonored, and unsung.

Sir Walter Scott