Give me the songs I loved to hear,
In sweet and sunny days of yore;
Which came in gushes to my ear
From lips that breathe them now no more;
From lips, alas! on which the worm,
In coiled and dusty silence lies,
Where many a loved, lamented form
Is hid from Sorrow's filling eyes!

Yes! when those unforgotten lays,
Come trembling with a spirit-voice,
I mind me of those early days,
When to respire was to rejoice:
When gladsome flowers and fruitage shone
Where'er my willing footstep fell;
When Hope's bright realm was all mine own,
And Fancy whispered, ‘All is well.’

Give me old songs! They stir my heart
As with some glorious trumpet-tone;
Beyond the reach of modern art,
They rule its thrilling cords alone,
Till, on the wings of thought, I fly,
Back to that boundary of bliss,
Which once beneath my childhood's sky
Embraced a scene of loveliness!

Thus, when the portals of mine ear
Those long-remembered lays receive,
They seem like guests, whose voices cheer
My breast, and bid it not to grieve:
They ring in cadences of love,
They tell of dreams now vanished all;
Dreams, that descended from above—
Visions, 't is rapture to recall!

Give me old songs! I know not why,
But every tone they breathe to me
Is draught with pleasures pure and high,
With honest love or honest glee:
They move me, when by chance I hear,
They rouse each slumbering pulse anew;
Till every scene to memory dear
Is pictured brightly to my view.

I do not ask those sickly lays
O'er which affected maidens bend;
Which scented fops are bound to praise,
To which dull crowds their homage lend:
Give me some simple Scottish song,
Or lays, from Erin's distant isle;
Lays that to love and truth belong,
And cause the saddest lip to smile!