Glen Collection of printed music > Printed text > Harp of Renfrewshire

118
Blest scenes of innocence and rural loves ;
Where cloudy smoke ne'er darkens up the sky,
Nor glaring buildings tire the sick'ning eye ;
But spreading meadows wave with flowery hay,
And, drowned in grass the milky mothers stray ;
While down each vale descends the glitt'ring rill,
And bleating flocks swarm o'er each smiling hiU ;
And woody vales, where deep retired from sight,
Lone rivers brawl o'er many a horrid height.
If scenes like these can please your roving mind,
Or lend one rapture to my dearest friend,
All hail ! ye sacred Nine, assist my flight,
To spread their beauties open to his sight.
Low, at the foot of huge extended hills,
Whose cloudy tops pour do-rni unnumbered rills,
And where loud Calder, rushing from the steep,
Roars to the lake with hoarse resistless sweep,
Lochwinnoch stands, stretched on a rising ground,
In biilk a village, but in worth a town.
Here lives your friend, amid as cheerful swains
As e'er trod o'er the famed Arcadian plains ;
Far from the world retired, our only care
In silken gauze to form the flow'rets fair,
To bid beneath our hands gay blossoms rise.
In all the colours of the changing skies.
Dispatched to foreign climes, our beai;teous toil
Adorn the fair of many a distant isle ;
Shield from the scorching heat, or shiv'ring storms
And fairer deck out Nature's fairest form.
Such our sweet toils, when Peace, with gladd'ning smile,
Wraps in her wings our little busy isle.
But when, loud bellowing, furious from afar,
Is heard the uproar of approaching War,
Britannia rousing, when aspiring foes