J. F. Campbell Collection > Popular rhymes of Scotland

350 ORIGINAL POEMS.
Perfect joy, it seems clear, must by hook or by crook.
Be obtained in a place called, par excellence^ Nook.
The Nook ! — how endearing and pleasant the word —
As bieldy and warm as the nest of a bird !
Sure a place so designed must know little of care,
And summer must linger eternally there ;
No resting-place, surely, for sorrow or sin.
But all blossom without, and all pleasure within :
There children must sport, all unknowing of pain.
And old folk, looking on, become children again.
Sad Poortith will pass it ungrudgingly by,
And Wealth only cast a soUcitous eye.
'Twere surely fit scene for a goddess' descent —
The goddess long lost to us — holy Content.
Such thoughts it is easy to string up together ;
But reason might smash them perhaps with a feather.
And things might be in such a concatenation.
That the Nook might become quite a scene of vexation.
Yet of this, as it happens, there's no chance or little.
Unless, like the smallpox, vexation turns smittle ;
For here lives good Ainslie,* the blithest and best,
Who is happy himself, and makes happy the rest.
Whose temper is such, as he proves by his look.
That joy would be with him, even not in a nook;
Who has wit for all topics, and worth with it all,
And, while Mirth is in presence, keeps Sense within call.
To the Nook, why, a man such as this is as pat.
As the foot to the shoe, or the head to the hat ;
And so well do they answer to each other's quality,
So mixed is the man with his pleasant locality,
That a question it seems, and I cannot decide it.
Whether he, or the Nook, gives the most of the *ridet.*
1834.
LAMENT FOR THE OLD HIGHLAND WARRIORS.
Air— Cro Challein.\
Oh where are the pretty men of yore.
Oh where are the brave men gone.
Oh where are the heroes of the north ?
Each imder his own gray stone.
* The late Lieutenant-General George Robert Ainslie, author of a learned
work on the coins of the Anglo-French monarehs.
+ See this air in ' A Selection of Celtic Melodies.* Edinburgh : Purdie.
1830.