I lay in my bedroom at Peebles With my window curtains drawn, While there stole over hill of pasture and pine The unresplendent dawn. And through the deep silence I listen'd, With a pleased, half-waking heed, To the sound which ran through the ancient town-- The shallow-brawling Tweed. For to me 'twas a realisation Of dream; and I felt like one Who first sees the Alps, or the Pyramids, World-old, in the setting sun; First, crossing the purple Campagna, Beholds the wonderful dome Which a thought of Michael Angelo hung In the golden air of Rome. And all through the summer morning I felt it a joy indeed To whisper again and again to myself, This is the voice of the Tweed. Of Dryburgh, Melrose, and Neidpath, Norham Castle brown and bare, The merry sun shining on merry Carlisle, And the Bush aboon Traquair, I had dream'd: but most of the river, That, glittering mile on mile, Flow'd through my imagination, As through Egypt flows the Nile. Was it absolute truth, or a dreaming That the wakeful day disowns, That I heard something more in the stream, as it ran, Than water breaking on stones? Now the hoofs of a flying mosstrooper, Now a bloodhound's bay, half caught, The sudden blast of a hunting horn, The burr of Walter Scott? Who knows? But of this I am certain, That but for the ballads and wails That make passionate dead things, stocks and stones, Make piteous woods and dales, The Tweed were as poor as the Amazon, That, for all the years it has roll'd, Can tell but how fair was the morning red, How sweet the evening gold. JUBILATION OF SERGEANT M'TURK ON WITNESSING THE HIGHLAND GAMES. INVERNESS, 1864. Hurrah for the Highland glory! Hurrah for the Highland fame! For the battles of the great Montrose, And the pass of the gallant Graeme! Hurrah for the knights and nobles That rose up in their place, And perill'd fame and fortune For Charlie's bonny face! Awa frae green Lochaber He led his slender clans: The rising skirl o' our bagpipes fley'd Sir John at Prestonpans. Ance mair we gather'd glory In Falkirk's battle stoure, Ere the tartans lay red-soak'd in bluid On black Drumossie Moor. An' when the weary time was owre, When the head fell frae the neck, Wolfe heard the cry, "They run, they run!" On the heights aboon Quebec. At Ticonderoga's fortress We fell on sword and targe: Hurt Moore was lifted up to see "His Forty-second" charge. An' aye the pipe was loudest, An' aye the tartans flew, The first frae bluidy Maida To bluidier Waterloo. We have sail'd owre many a sea, my lads, We have fought 'neath many a sky, And it's where the fight has hottest raged That the tartans thickest lie.