112
RIDDELLS OF TIVIOTDALE, SCOTLAND.
hill-harps' notes of love" have gently died away, and she to whom the
poet "waked his harp" in the "bonnie green wood bowers o' the birks and
willows green," has followed him to "the hames of our ain folk," and their
mortal remains are laid in the quiet
"Church-yard that lonely is lying
Amid the deep greenwood by Tiviot's wild strand."
Through the influence of Dr. Bydon, a monument to his memory, in
the form of a large cairn, was erected in a place overlooking the poet's
home at Tiviothead, where he lived so long, and where the most of his
poems were composed. I subjoin some lines composed by him on the
death of his mother, as a sample of his style.
.
"THE LAMENT.
"In the sadness and pomp of funeral array,
To the grave of my father they bore her away,
And laid her in death's silent chambers to rest,
With the cold clay and church-yard turf over her breast,
And bade me to weep not for her who had gone
Away to a land where no sorrows were known;
To weep not for her who through regions sublime
Had traveled away from the troubles of time,
To live in the bliss of the highest abode,
With the angels of light and the Son of her God.
"Yet how may it be?
Can the bosom forget
The form, though so cold, and the eye, though now set?
Can the thoughts that away with the spirit will hie,
And accompany it on to the bowers of the sky,
There, lured and delighted, for ever remain,
Nor return to the earth and its sadness again?
Alas! there are shadows of darkness around,
With which while below we are deeply inbound;
There is sorrow in all that we listen and see,
And pain in the heart till the spirit be free,
And our thoughts woe-o'erclouded, still rest on the grave
Where slumber the forms that we longed so to save.
"She guarded my steps when existence was young,
Her lips o'er my cradle the lullaby sung,
Her kindness was o'er me- her arms still caressed,
And my head found a home on a mother's own breast;
And when every eyelid in slumber was closed,
When the shade of creation o'er nature reposed,
How oft would her bosom deep tenderness prove,
And yearn in its hope o'er the child of her love,
And breathe for my welfare to Heaven a prayer,
When I knew not of danger, nor dreamt of her care!
How then shall the power of remembrance decay
From the form that is cold in its chamber of clay?
How, how shall the heart, in its sadness of mood,
Forget o'er the loss of a mother to brood?
And when shall the radiance be shed from the sky,
That finds not a tear-drop for her in mine eye?
Is the house where her accents of love wont to flow,
Not a scene for the shadows of sadness and woe?
Is the charm that was shed by her presence around
Not fall'n from our life, never more to be found?
Do we feel not the gloom, and still live to deplore
The loved who is fled, and no years can restore?
"Oh! there was a time when our bosoms were gay
As the skylark that welcomes the breezes of May;
