Scottish Soil - by
They brought me
/ Seven handfuls of soil in seven bags
/ And a blindfold. “Now braggart,
/ Prove your boast and
/ Show us which is…
They brought me
/ Seven handfuls of soil in seven bags
/ And a blindfold. “Now braggart,
/ Prove your boast and
/ Show us which is…
We would be snaking up Loch Lomond, the
/ road narrow and winding after the turn at Tarbert,
/ and we’d be bending branches…
Small folk playing our part.
/ ‘Come all ye’, the country says
/ You win me, who take me most to heart. …
What do you mean when you speak of Scotland?
/ The grey defeats that are dead and gone
/ behind the legends each generation
/ savours…
Cuil-lodair, is Briseadh na h-Eaglaise,
/ is briseadh nan tacannan –
/ lamhachas-làidir dà thrian de ar comas;
/ ‘se seòltachd tha dhìth oirinn.
/ Nuair a…
Roch the wind in the clear day’s dawin
Blaws the cloods heelster-gowdie ow’r the bay,
But there’s mair nor a roch wind blawin
Through the great glen o’ the warld the day.
It requires great love of it deeply to read
The configuration of a land,
Gradually grow conscious of fine shadings,
Of great meanings in slight symbols…
Away, ye gay landscapes, ye gardens of roses,
/ In you let the minions of luxury rove,
/ Restore me the rocks where the…
Here in the Uplands
/ The soil is ungrateful;
/ The fields, red with sorrel,
/ Are stony and bare.
/ A few trees, wind-twisted –
/ Or are…
(St Andrew’s Day under the Southern Cross)
/
/ GOD bless our land, our Scotland,
/ Grey glen an’…