Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Ralph Waldo Emerson, comp. (1803–1882). Parnassus: An Anthology of Poetry. 1880.

Lament of Mary Queen of Scots, on the Approach of Spring

Robert Burns (1759–1796)

NOW Nature hangs her mantle green

On every blooming tree,

And spreads her sheets o’ daisies white

Out owre the grassy lea:

Now Phœbus cheers the crystal streams,

And glads the azure skies;

But nought can glad the weary wight

That fast in durance lies.

Now laverocks wake the merry morn,

Aloft on dewy wing;

The merle, in his noontide bower,

Makes woodland echoes ring;

The mavis mild, wi’ many a note,

Sings drowsy day to rest:

In love and freedom they rejoice,

Wi’ care nor thrall opprest.

Now blooms the lily by the bank,

The primrose down the brae;

The hawthorn’s budding in the glen,

And milk-white is the slae:

The meanest hind in fair Scotland

May rove their sweets amang:

But I, the Queen of a’ Scotland,

Maun lie in prison strang.

I was the Queen o’ bonnie France,

Where happy I hae been,

Fu’ lightly rase I in the morn,

As blythe lay down at e’en:

And I’m the sov’reign of Scotland,

And mony a traitor there;

Yet here I lie in foreign bands,

And never ending care.

But as for thee, thou false woman,

My sister and my fae,

Grim vengeance yet shall whet a sword

That through thy soul shall gae:

The weeping blood in woman’s breast

Was never known to thee;

Nor the balm that draps on wounds of woe

Frae woman’s pitying e’e.

My son! my son! may kinder stars

Upon thy fortune shine;

And may those pleasures gild thy reign,

That ne’er wad blink on mine!

God keep thee frae thy mother’s faes,

Or turn their hearts to thee;

And where thou meet’st thy mother’s friend,

Remember him for me!

Oh! soon, to me, may summer suns

Nae mair light up the morn!

Nae mair, to me, the autumn winds

Wave o’er the yellow corn!

And in the narrow house o’ death

Let winter round me rave;

And the next flowers that deck the spring,

Bloom on my peaceful grave!