The arched Gateway open still invites, The curious Traveller to pause awhile, Instructs the grave--the gay but ill delights, Nor asks the vacant for a single smile. High o'er its top the branching Elms ascend, And gild their summits in the Evening beam, The creeping ivy, Ruin's constant friend, Clasps its worn sides and enters every seam. Musing, within these limits oft I rove, A slave to Love's alternate hopes and fears, With heedless footsteps pace the silent grove, And vent the Sorrows of my heart in tears. Here tune my Soul to Pity's softest strain, Mark the swift progress of Life's fleeting hour, Learn, from my own, to feel another's Pain, Nor covet wealth, or court ambitious Power. Here too, when from the West the sun's last ray Shoots thro' the gloom, and brightens all the scene, Here fair Eliza oft was wont to stray, And add new lustre to the vernal green. The newly-built houses which now closely surround Bruntisfield have swept away two curious landmarks of the past. One was the mound of earth on which James IV. stood to review his army, preparatory to the expedition which ended so disastrously at Flodden.[3] The other was a flat, moss-grown stone which lay in the park, almost hidden by the grass and daisies growing round it. On it was carved a skull, surmounted by a winged hour-glass and a mutilated scroll; and below it a shield bearing a saltier, and the initials M. I. R. and the date 1645. "The M.," says Wilson in his _Reminiscences of Old Edinburgh_, "surmounted the shield, indicative of the standing of the deceased as a Master of Arts, and so telling of a scholar and a gentleman, who slept there apart from his kin, a victim to that last and most fatal visitation of the plague." When that part of the park was built over, the stone was carefully removed from its ancient site, and placed in safety against a wall in the garden of Bruntisfield, where, though much obliterated by weather, its carvings can still be traced. [3] When my aunt, Lady John Scott, was staying at Bruntisfield in 1863, she trenched the mound across, and made a thorough examination of it, but discovered nothing, beyond that it was undoubtedly artificial.