A Jacobite's Exile

The weary day rins down and dies,The weary night wears through:And never an hour is fair wi' flower,And never a flower wi' dew.

I would the day were night for me,I would the night were day:For then would I stand in my ain fair land,As now in dreams I may.

O lordly flow the Loire and Seine,And loud the dark Durance:But bonnier shine the braes of TyneThan a' the fields of France;And the waves of Till that speak sae stillGleam goodlier where they glance.

O weel were they that fell fightingOn dark Drumossie's day:They keep their hame ayont the faem,And we die far away.

O sound they sleep, and saft, and deep,But night and day wake we;And ever between the sea-banks greenSounds loud the sundering sea.

And ill we sleep, sae sair we weep,But sweet and fast sleep they;And the mool that haps them roun' and laps themIs e'en their country's clay;But the land we tread that are not deadIs strange as night by day.

Strange as night in a strange man's sight,Though fair as dawn it be:For what is here that a stranger's cheerShould yet wax blithe to see?

The hills stand steep, the dells lie deep,The fields are green and gold:The hill-streams sing, and the hill-sides ring,As ours at home of old.

But hills and flowers are nane of ours,And ours are oversea:And the kind strange land whereon we stand,It wotsna what were weOr ever we came, wi' scathe and shame,To try what end might be.

Scathe, and shame, and a waefu' name,And a weary time and strange,Have they that seeing a weird for dreeingCan die, and cannot change.

Shame and scorn may we thole that mourn,Though sair be they to dree:But ill may we bide the thoughts we hide,Mair keen than wind and sea.

Ill may we thole the night's watches,And ill the weary day:And the dreams that keep the gates of sleep,A waefu' gift gie they;For the sangs they sing us, the sights they bring us,The morn blaws all away.

On Aikenshaw the sun blinks braw,The burn rins blithe and fain:There's nought wi' me I wadna gieTo look thereon again.

On Keilder-side the wind blaws wide;There sounds nae hunting-hornThat rings sae sweet as the winds that beatRound banks where Tyne is born.

The Wansbeck sings with all her springs,The bents and braes give ear;But the wood that rings wi' the sang she singsI may not see nor hear;For far and far thae blithe burns are,And strange is a' thing near.

The light there lightens, the day there brightens,The loud wind there lives free:Nae light comes nigh me or wind blaws by meThat I wad hear or see.

But O gin I were there again,Afar ayont the faem,Cauld and dead in the sweet saft bedThat haps my sires at hame!

We'll see nae mair the sea-banks fair,And the sweet grey gleaming sky,And the lordly strand of Northumberland,And the goodly towers thereby:And none shall know but the winds that blowThe graves wherein we lie.