Читать книгу The Complete Works - Роберт Бернс, Robert Burns - Страница 88

Admiring Nature in her wildest grace,

These northern scenes with weary feet I trace;

O’er many a winding dale and painful steep,

Th’ abodes of covey’d grouse and timid sheep,

My savage journey, curious I pursue,

’Till fam’d Breadalbane opens to my view.—

The meeting cliffs each deep-sunk glen divides,

The woods, wild scatter’d, clothe their ample sides;

Th’ outstretching lake, embosom’d ‘mong the hills,

The eye with wonder and amazement fills;

The Tay, meand’ring sweet in infant pride,

The palace, rising on its verdant side;

The lawns, wood-fring’d in Nature’s native taste;

The hillocks, dropt in Nature’s careless haste;

The arches, striding o’er the new-born stream;

The village, glittering in the noontide beam—

Poetic ardours in my bosom swell,

Lone wand’ring by the hermit’s mossy cell:

The sweeping theatre of hanging woods;

Th’ incessant roar of headlong tumbling floods—

Here Poesy might wake her heav’n-taught lyre,

And look through Nature with creative fire;

Here, to the wrongs of fate half reconcil’d,

Misfortune’s lighten’d steps might wander wild;

And Disappointment, in these lonely bounds,

Find balm to soothe her bitter—rankling wounds:

Here heart-struck Grief might heav’nward stretch her scan,

And injur’d Worth forget and pardon man.