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

That shivers when succeeding woes assail,
Stalks forth, short-sighted, deeming specious show,
As solid happiness ; unapt to know
The changling man, ere even pleasvire please,
Must pain endure, and combat ease for ease.
There is a pungency unpencill'd yet
By any writer I have ever met,
That, with electric tremour, strikes the heart,
Making its inmost vital chords to smart ;
When from the endearing, balm distilling bowers,
(Where childhood sported in a waste of flowers,)
The heavenly ties of calm domestic bliss.
The sire's injunctions, the maternal kiss,
The young heart severeth ; — a forecast, fraught
With sable woe, thwarts the disk of thought,
In whose dim shades, clad in prophetic state,
Fear gives responses of succeeding fate.
So Celia felt, prophetic in her fear —
Backward she look'd ; anon a starting tear
Trembles, unwieldly, in her dark blue eye,
The distillation of the heaving sigh,
That like a close-pent earthquake's struggling throe,
From their fair site, upheav'd two hills of snow.
Fair country of delights, whose happy zone
With vernal sweets, a bright Elysian shore ;
What charms, what philtres, and what sorcery, knew
The favour'd youth, such sweetness to subdiie ?
With hesitating step, and pensive air,
(So parts the leveret, from the parent hare ;)
She left the cottage and her slumbering sire,
While Mora's crest yet blaz'd with solar fire.
Her throbbing heart yields the parental claim,
The heart confessed a more endearing name ;
From all preceptor's rules, but Love's, astray,
Solely love-guided took her secret way.