Scotland

MY country! My country! I’ll love thee forever!

Pair land of my birth; I forget thee will never:

Though severed from thee by the deep-heaving main,

Hope’s whispers still tell me I’ll see thee again—

Truth reigning triumphant, by shores uninvaded,

Thy beauty unshorn, and thy Thistle unfaded.

When Summer makes Nature her glories disclose,

When Winter is robed in her mantle of snows,

And withers the flowerets that deck the gay scene,

Thy Thistle stands forth in its garment of green.

Proud emblem of freedom! disdaining to crouch,

The tyrant reels back at its deep-piercing touch;

He cannot, he dare not, its beauty deform,

For boldly it stands ’mid the tempest and storm.

Oh! long may it wave on the green mountain side,

Unfading as Truth in the strength of its pride:

Then spare it, O Time, from the wrecks of decay,

Till Nature expires and the hills melt away.