For The Meeting Of The Burns Club

The mountains glitter in the snow     A thousand leagues asunder;     Yet here, amid the banquet's glow,     I hear their voice of thunder;     Each giant's ice-bound goblet clinks;     A flowing stream is summoned;     Wachusett to Ben Nevis drinks;     Monadnock to Ben Lomond!     Though years have clipped the eagle's plume     That crowned the chieftain's bonnet,     The sun still sees the heather bloom,     The silver mists lie on it;     With tartan kilt and philibeg,     What stride was ever bolder     Than his who showed the naked leg     Beneath the plaided shoulder?     The echoes sleep on Cheviot's hills,     That heard the bugles blowing     When down their sides the crimson rills     With mingled blood were flowing;     The hunts where gallant hearts were game,     The slashing on the border,     The raid that swooped with sword and flame,     Give place to "law and order."     Not while the rocking steeples reel     With midnight tocsins ringing,     Not while the crashing war-notes peal,     God sets his poets singing;     The bird is silent in the night,     Or shrieks a cry of warning     While fluttering round the beacon-light, -     But hear him greet the morning!     The lark of Scotia's morning sky!     Whose voice may sing his praises?     With Heaven's own sunlight in his eye,     He walked among the daisies,     Till through the cloud of fortune's wrong     He soared to fields of glory;     But left his land her sweetest song     And earth her saddest story.     'T is not the forts the builder piles     That chain the earth together;     The wedded crowns, the sister isles,     Would laugh at such a tether;     The kindling thought, the throbbing words,     That set the pulses beating,     Are stronger than the myriad swords     Of mighty armies meeting.     Thus while within the banquet glows,     Without, the wild winds whistle,     We drink a triple health, - the Rose,     The Shamrock, and the Thistle     Their blended hues shall never fade     Till War has hushed his cannon, -     Close-twined as ocean-currents braid     The Thames, the Clyde, the Shannon!