Oh! bury me not by the multitude's side, I would shun them in death, as in life I avoid; Where the loathsome newt creeps, 'neath the rank hemlock's shade, Is not where I would that my bones should be laid.
But bear me away to the limitless sea, And heave me afar 'mong its billows so free: Where my flesh may be wasted, but never shall rot-- Where man is not dust, and corruption is not.
Oh delight! to be tost from wild wave to wild wave-- I seek not for rest--it is found in the grave-- And my skeleton bleach on the foam it is cast-- A link of the future--a wreck of the past.
But alas! if the doom of my kind must be mine, If my bones in the land of decay must recline; Seek me out some lone glen, some wild Highland vale, Where the tempest's loud shriek shall my coronach wail.
A rude rugged land, with a wild heather sod, Where the sun never shone, where man's foot never trod; Where the gleam of the day falls with withering blight, And a desolate darkness comes with the night.
Where the waterfall roars like a storm o'er the heath, The scathed Pine above, and the hoar Elm beneath; 'Mongst the lone, and the mighty, the vast and the deep-- 'Tis there, as their own, that a Poet should sleep.
DOWN in the valley lone, Far in the wild wood, Bubble forth springs, each one Weeping like childhood; Bright on their rushy banks, Like joys among sadness, Little flowers bloom in ranks-- Glimpses of gladness.
Sweet 'tis to wander forth, Like pilgrims at even; Lifting our souls from earth To fix them on Heaven; Then in our transport deep, This world forsaking: Sleeping as Angels sleep, Mortals awaking!
BY Tweed's fair stream, in a secluded spot, Rises an ivy-crowned monastic pile; Beneath its shadow sleeps the WIZARD, SCOTT; A Ruin is his resting-place--no vile Unconsecrated grave-yard is the soil-- Few moulder there, but these the loved, the good, The honoured, and the famed--and sweet flowers smile Around the precincts of the Abbeyhood, While Cedar, Oak, and Yew adorn that solitude.
Hail, Dryburgh! to thy sylvan shades all hail!-- As to a shrine, from places far away, With awe-struck spirit, to thy classic vale Shall pilgrims come, to muse, perchance to pray; More hallowed now than in thy elder day, For sacred is the earth wherein is laid The Poet's dust; and still his mind, his lay, And his renown, shall flourish undecayed, Like his loved country's fame, that is not doomed to fade.