Blair Collection > Selections from the Gaelic bards

LOCH-IN-DAAL. 21 J
I must forget myself before
Thy beauties fade to me.
Those deep blue hills that rise afar,
Like giants straight and high,
Delightedly I 've looked on them
With childhood's dazzled eye ;
And now I look on thee again
What old, old things come by.
Oh! many long past things that haunt
Thy banks, and fields, and ways ;
A thousand forms of tender things
My heart-touched feelings raise
Around thee here, on which youth's sun,
With noontide lustre, plays.
Old friends who now are none for me
Still haunt thy changeless shore;
And friends, alas! who now are gone,
Where we meet not as of yore ;
And friends, thank God, who still are friends,
Just as they were before.
And men and matrons — maids and youths,
Who were no friends at all ;
They too come flocking to my side,
With or without a call:
The old, the young, the grave, the gay —
The short ones and the tall.
They troop into the village streets —
They stand as oft they stood,
Round the street-corners, talking long
Of bad things and of good ;
For the flippant and the wise were there-
The civil and the rude.