David Macbeth Moir

Sonnets on the Scenery of the Tweed

I.

AS we had been in heart, now linked in hand,
Green Learmonth and the Cheviots left behind,
Homeward ’t was ours by pastoral Tweed to wind,
Through the Arcadia of the Borderland:
Vainly would words portray my feelings, when
(A dreary chasm of separation past)
Fate gave thee to my vacant arms at last,
And made me the most happy man of men.
Accept these trifles, lovely and beloved,
And haply, in the days of future years,	
While the far past to memory reappears,
Thou may’st retrace these tablets not unmoved,
Catherine! whose holy constancy was proved
By all that deepest tries, and most endears.

II.
WARK CASTLE

EMBLEM of strength, which time hath quite subdued,
Scarcely on thy green mount the eye may trace
Those girding walls which made thee once a place
Of succor, in old days of deadly feud.
Yes! thou wert once the Scotch marauder’s dread;
And vainly did the Roxburgh shafts assail
Thy moated towers, from which they fell like hail;
While waved Northumbria’s pennon o’er thy head.
Thou wert the work of man, and so hast passed
Like those who piled thee; but the features still
Of steadfast nature all unchanged remain;
Still Cheviot listens to the northern blast,
And the blue Tweed winds murmuring round thy hill;
While Carham whispers of the slaughtered Dane.
 
III.
DRYBURGH ABBEY

BENEATH, Tweed murmured amid the forests green:
And through thy beech-tree and laburnum boughs,	
A solemn ruin, lovely in repose,
Dryburgh! thine ivied walls were grayly seen:
Thy court is now a garden, where the flowers
Expand in silent beauty, and the bird,
Flitting from arch to arch, alone is heard
To cheer with song the melancholy bowers.
Yet did a solemn pleasure fill the soul,
As through thy shadowy cloistral cells we trode,
To think, hoar pile! that once thou wert the abode
Of men, who could to solitude control
Their hopes,—yea! from ambition’s pathways stole,
To give their whole lives blamelessly to God!

IV.
MELROSE ABBEY

SUMMER was on thee,—the meridian light,
And, as we wandered through thy columned aisles,
Decked all thy hoar magnificence with smiles,
Making the rugged soft, the gloomy bright.
Nor was reflection from us far apart,
As clomb our steps thy lone and lofty stair,
Till, gained the summit, ticked in silent air
Thine ancient clock, as ’t were thy throbbing heart.
Monastic grandeur and baronial pride
Subdued,—the former half, the latter quite,
Pile of King David! to thine altar’s site,
Full many a footstep guides and long shall guide;
Where they repose, who met not, save in fight,—	
And Douglas sleeps with Evers, side by side!

V.
ABBOTSFORD

THE CALM of evening o’er the dark pine-wood
Lay with an aureate glow, as we explored
Thy classic precincts, hallowed Abbotsford!
And at thy porch in admiration stood:
We felt thou wert the work, th’ abode of him
Whose fame hath shed a lustre on our age,
The mightiest of the mighty!—o’er whose page
Thousands shall hang, until Time’s eye grow dim;
And then we thought, when shall have passed away
The millions now pursuing life’s career,
And Scott himself is dust, how, lingering here,
Pilgrims from all the lands of earth shall stray
Amid thy cherished ruins, and survey
The scenes around, with reverential fear!

VI.
NIDPATH CASTLE

STERN, rugged pile! thy scowl recalls the days
Of foray and of feud, when, long ago,
Homes were thought worthy of reproach or praise
Only as yielding safeguards from the foe:
Over thy gateways the armorial arms
Proclaim of doughty Douglases, who held
Thy towers against the foe, and thence repelled
Oft, after efforts vain, invasion’s harms.
Eve dimmed the hills, as, by the Tweed below,
We sat where once thy blossomy orchards smiled,	
And yet where many an apple-tree grows wild,
Listening the blackbird, and the river’s flow;
While, high between us and the sunset glow,
Thy giant walls seemed picturesquely piled.

VII.
“THE BUSH ABOON TRAQUAIR”

AS speaks the sea-shell from the window-sill
Of cottage-home, far inland, to the soul
Of the bronzed veteran, till he hears the roll
Of ocean mid its islands chafing still;
As speaks the love-gift to the lonely heart
Of her whose hopes are buried in the grave
Of him whom tears, prayer, passion, could not save,
And Fate but linked that Death might tear apart,—
So speaks the ancient melody of thee,
Green “Bush aboon Traquair,” that from the steep
O’erhang’st the Tweed until, mayhap afar,
In realms beyond the separating sea,
The plaided exile, ’neath the evening star,
Thinking of Scotland, scarce forbears to weep!