Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry. 1904.
Poems of FriendshipElegy on Captain Matthew Henderson
Robert Burns (17591796)H
The ae best fellow e’er was born!
Thee, Matthew, Nature’s sel’ shall mourn
By wood and wild,
Where, haply, pity strays forlorn,
Frae man exiled.
That proudly cock your cresting cairns!
Ye cliffs, the haunts of sailing yearns,
Where echo slumbers!
Come join, ye Nature’s sturdiest bairns,
My wailing numbers!
Ye hazelly shaws and briery dens!
Ye burnies, wimplin’ down your glens,
Wi’ toddlin’ din,
Or foaming strang, wi’ hasty stens,
Frae lin to lin!
Ye stately foxgloves fair to see;
Ye woodbines hanging bonnilie
In scented bowers;
Ye roses on your thorny tree,
The first o’ flowers.
Droops with a diamond at his head,
At even, when beans their fragrance shed,
I’ the rustling gale,
Ye maukins whiddin through the glade,
Come join my wail.
Ye grouse that crap the heather bud;
Ye curlews calling through a clud;
Ye whistling plover;
And mourn, ye whirring paitrick brood;
He ’s gane forever!
Ye fisher herons, watching eels;
Ye duck and drake, wi’ airy wheels
Circling the lake;
Ye bitterns, till the quagmire reels,
Rair for his sake.
’Mang fields o’ flowering clover gay;
And when ye wing your annual way
Frae our cauld shore,
Tell thae far warlds wha lies in clay,
Wham we deplore.
In some auld tree, or eldritch tower,
What time the moon, wi’ silent glower,
Sets up her horn,
Wail thro’ the dreary midnight hour
Till waukrife morn.
Oft have ye heard my canty strains:
But now, what else for me remains
But tales of wo?
And frae my een the drapping rains
Maun ever flow.
Ilk cowslip cup shall keep a tear:
Thou, Simmer, while each corny spear
Shoots up its head,
Thy gay, green flowery tresses shear,
For him that ’s dead!
In grief thy sallow mantle tear!
Thou, Winter, hurling through the air
The roaring blast,
Wide o’er the naked world declare
The worth we ’ve lost.
Mourn, empress of the silent night!
And you, ye twinkling starnies bright,
My Matthew mourn!
For thro’ your orbs he ’s ta’en his flight,
Ne’er to return.
And art thou gone, and gone forever!
And hast thou crost that unknown river,
Life’s dreary bound!
Like thee where shall I find another,
The world around!
In a’ the tinsel trash o’ state!
But by thy honest turf I ’ll wait,
Thou man of worth!
And weep the ae best fellow’s fate
E’er lay in earth.