J. F. Campbell Collection > Popular rhymes of Scotland

ORIGINAL POEMS.
THE GRAVE OF THE MISANTHROPE.*
I SAT upon the hermit's grave ;
'Twas on a smiling summer's day,
When all around the gloomy spot
Was brightened by the skies of May.
In undistinguished lowliness
I found the little mound of earth,
And bitter weeds o'ergrew the place,
As if his heart had given them birth.
And they from thence their nurture drew —
In such luxuriance they grew.
No friendship to his grave had lent
Such rudely-sculptured monument
As marked the peasant's place of rest ;
For he, the latest of his race.
Had left no friend behind, to trace
Such frail memorial o'er his breast.
But near his head a sapling waved
The honours of its slender form.
And in its loneliness had braved
The autumn blast, the winter storm.
* This poem relates to David Ritchie, a deformed and eccentric pauper,
who, for many years previous to 1811, dwelt in a solitary cottage in the vale
of Manor, near Peebles, and is allowed by Sir Walter Scott to have been the
prototj-pe of the fictitious character of the Black Dwarf. With an intellect
of considerable native strength, and by no means uncultivated, this poor
hater of his kind had a superstitious veneration for the mountain-ash, or
rowan-tree, and his grave in Manor churchyard was marked by a plant of
that species.