Blair Collection > Selections from the Gaelic bards

09
Ach! ach! Now I 'm trying
My loss to forget —
With sorrow and sighing,
With anger and fret.
But still that sweet image
Steals over my heart ;
And still I deem fondly
Hope need not depart.
Heich! and I say
That our love,
Firm as a tower gray,
Nought can remove.
So Fancy beguiles me,
And fills me with glee,
But the carpenter wiles thee',
False speaker! from me.
Yet from Love's first affection
I never get free ;
But the dear known direction
My thoughts ever flee.
Heich ! when we stray' d
Far away,
Where soft shone the summer day
Through the green shade.
The airy, haughty, heartless coquette of this little ballad is
sketched with considerable spirit. "Ha! ha! ha! Are you ill?"
is a touch of Nature. One sees the poor disconsolate bard stand-
ing bewildered before her without a word in his head — so utterly
cast down is he at the ill-placed mirth and cruel triumph of his
fair-haired beauty. He has contrived, however, to make the lady
show a little pique too, — "If Love seeks to kill you — bah! small
is his skill!" — as if to console himself with the idea that his old
favourite was not so utterly destitute of feeling, nor her old love,
after all, so easily cast off without leaving a trace behind.
It would not perhaps be altogether unsatisfactory to know that