Those Scottish songs, and all so far away!
They sing of bonnie lasses and the hills
they long to see again some happy day
when Spring’s melt-water through the forest spills.
Love-laden ballads out of long-belled lands,
those lamentations borne of laboured brow:
they fasten and engulf the Scottish glands,
they gurgle in my gloating fondness now.
My icy love falls from me as it thaws,
produces plunge-pools in its weeping streams
and lives in nature’s most delightful pause,
transparent, pure and deeper than it seems.