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Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Scotland: Vols. VI–VIII. 1876–79.

Introductory

Caledonia

By Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832)

(From The Lay of the Last Minstrel)

BREATHES there the man, with soul so dead,

Who never to himself hath said,

This is my own, my native land!

Whose heart hath ne’er within him burned,

As home his footsteps he hath turned,

From wandering on a foreign strand!

If such there breathe, go, mark him well;

For him no minstrel raptures swell;

High though his titles, proud his name,

Boundless his wealth as wish can claim;

Despite those titles, power, and pelf,

The wretch, concentred all in self,

Living, shall forfeit fair renown,

And, doubly dying, shall go down

To the vile dust from whence he sprung,

Unwept, unhonored, and unsung.

O Caledonia! stern and wild,

Meet nurse for a poetic child!

Land of brown heath and shaggy wood,

Land of the mountain and the flood,

Land of my sires! what mortal hand

Can e’er untie the filial band

That knits me to thy rugged strand?

Still, as I view each well-known scene,

Think what is now and what hath been,

Seems as, to me, of all bereft,

Sole friends thy woods and streams were left,

And thus I love them better still,

Even in extremity of ill.

By Yarrow’s stream still let me stray,

Though none should guide my feeble way,

Still feel the breeze down Ettrick break,

Although it chill my withered cheek;

Still lay my head by Teviot stone,

Though there, forgotten and alone,

The bard may draw his parting groan.