Robert Burns

* * *

Now spring has clad the groves in green,
  And strew’d the lea wi’ flowers;
The furrow’d waving corn is seen
  Rejoice in fostering showers.
While ilka thing in nature join
  Their sorrows to forego,
O why thus all alone are mine
  The weary steps of woe!

The trout in yonder wimpling burn
  Glides swift, a silver dart,
And safe beneath the shady thorn
  Defies the angler’s art:
My life was once that careless stream,
  That wanton trout was I;
But love, wi’ unrelenting beam,
  Has scorch’d my fountain dry.

The little floweret’s peaceful lot,
  In yonder cliff that grows,
Which, save the linnet’s flight, I wot,
  Nae ruder visit knows,
Was mine; till love has o’er me past,
  And blighted a’ my bloom;
And now beneath the withering blast
  My youth and joy consume.

The waken’d lav’rock warbling springs,
  And climbs the early sky,
Winnowing blithe her dewy wings
  In morning’s rosy eye;
As little reckt I sorrow’s power,
  Until the flowery snare
O’ witching love, in luckless hour,
  Made me the thrall o’ care.

O had my fate been Greenland’s snows
  Or Afric’s burning zone,
Wi’ man and nature leagued my foes,
  So Peggy ne’er I’d known!
The wretch whase doom is ‘Hope nae mair!’
  What tongue his woes can tell!
Within whase bosom, save despair,
  Nae kinder spirits dwell.