Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Scotland: Vols. VI–VIII. 1876–79.

Kelvin Water

To Kelvin Water

By James Cochrane

SEQUESTERED stream! I saw year after year

The noxious town expanding, street on street,

Blighting the rural charms of thy retreat,

Where whispering lovers, no intruders near,

Walked hand in hand; where oft with stealthy feet

I hied along thy banks at morn, to hear

The small shrill wren the spring’s reveille beat:

And as a bird, when robbed by driving sleet

Or cruel imps of half its fledglings dear,

Clings but the closer to the few still left,

So I to thee while one tree was uncleft;

But every vestige of the forest gone,

Like the same bird when reft of all her brood,

Who pours her mournful ditty through the wood,

I sing thy dirge far off, and all alone.