These verses are allegorical. In the character of a
song-bird the bard relates the circumstances of his
nativity, the simple habits of his progenitors, and his
own rural tastes and recreations from infancy, giving
the first place to the delights of melody. He proceeds
to give an account of his flight to a strange but
hospitable region, where he continued to sing his songs
among the birds, the flocks, the streams, and
cultivated fields of the land of his sojourn. This
piece is founded upon a common usage of the Gaelic
bards, several of whom assume the allegorical character
of the "Mavis" of their own clan. Thus we have the
Mavis of Clan-ranald by Mac-Vaistir-Allister--of
Macdonald (of Sleat) by Mac Codrum--of Macleod, and
many others.
Clan Lachlan's tuneful mavis, I sing on the branches early,
And such my love of song, I sleep but half the night-tide rarely;
No raven I, of greedy maw, no kite of bloody beak,
No bird of devastating claw, but a woodland songster meek.
I love the apple's infant bloom; my ancestry have fared
For ages on the nourishment the orchard hath prepared:
Their hey-day was the summer, their joy the summer's dawn,
And their dancing-floor it was the green leaf's velvet lawn;
Their song was the carol that defiance bade to care,
And their breath of life it was the summer's balmiest air.
When first my morn of life was born, the Pean's[37] silver stream
Glanced in my eye, and then there lent my view their kinder gleam,
The flowers that fringed its side, where, by the fragrant breezes lull'd,
As in a cradle-bed I lay, and all my woes were still'd.
But changes will come over us, and now a stranger I
Among the glades of Cluaran[38] must imp my wings and fly;
Yet gratitude forbid complaint, although in foreign grove,
Since welcome to my haunt I come, and there in freedom rove.
By every song-bird charm'd, my ear is fed the livelong day,
Now from the hollow's deepest dell, now from the top-most spray,
The comrades of my lay, they tune their wild notes for my pleasure,
And I, can I refrain to swell their diapason's measure?
With its own clusters loaded, with its rich foliage dress'd,
Each bough is hanging down, and each shapely stem depress'd,
While nestle there inhabitants, a feather'd tuneful choir,
That in the strife of song breathe forth a flame of minstrel fire.
O happy tribe of choristers! no interruption mars
The concert of your harmony, nor ever harshly jars
A string of all your harping, nor of your voices trill
Notes that are weak for tameness, that are for sharpness shrill.
The sun is on his flushing march, his golden hair abroad,
It seems as on the mountain's side of beams a furnace glow'd,
Now melts the honey from all flowers, and now a dew o'erspreads
(A dew of fragrant blessedness) all the grasses of the meads.
Nor least in my remembrance is my country's flowering heather,
Whose russet crest, nor cold, nor sun, nor sweep of gale may wither;
Dear to my eye the symbol wild, that loves like me the side
Of my own Highland mountains that I climb in love and pride.
Dear tribes of nature! co-mates ye of nature's wandering son--
I hail the lambs that on the floor of milky pastures run,
I hail the mother flocks, that, wrapp'd in their mantle of the fleece,
Defy the landward tempest's roar, and defy the seaward breeze.
The streams they drink are waters of the ever-gushing well,
Those streams, oh, how they wind around the swellings of the dell!
The flowers they browze are mantles spread o'er pastures wide and far,
As mantle o'er the firmament the stars, each flower a star!
I will not name each sister beam, but clustering there I see
The beauty of the purple-bell, the daisy of the lea.
Of every hue I mark them, the many-spotted kine,
The dun, the brindled, and the dark, and blends the bright its shine;
And, 'mid the Highlands rude, I see the frequent furrows swell,
With the barley and the corn that Scotland loves so well.
* * * * *
And now I close my clannish lay with blessings on the shade
That bids the mavis sing her song, well nurtured, undismay'd;
The shade where bloom and cresses, and the ear-honey'd heather,
Are smiling fair, and dwelling in their brotherhood together;
For the sun is setting largely, and blinks my eye its ken;
'T is time to loose the strings, I ween, and close my wild-wood strain.