Relationships and Family

Flowers are lovely; love is flower-like; Friendship is a sheltering tree.

Alas! they had been friends in youth; But whispering tongues can poison truth; And constancy lives in realms above; And life is thorny; and youth is vain; And to be wroth with one we love Doth work like madness in the brain.

Is this the hill? is this the kirk? Is this mine own countree?

A mother’s pride, a father’s joy.

A mother’s pride, a father’s joy.

O Woman! in our hours of ease, Uncertain, coy, and hard to please, And variable as the shade By the light quivering aspen made; When pain and anguish wring the brow, A ministering angel thou!

Heap on more wood!—the wind is chill; But let it whistle as it will, We’ll keep our Christmas merry still.

For a laggard in love, and a dastard in war, Was to wed the fair Ellen of brave Lochinvar.

So faithful in love, and so dauntless in war, There never was knight like the young Lochinvar.

In peace, Love tunes the shepherd’s reed; In war, he mounts the warrior’s steed; In halls, in gay attire is seen; In hamlets, dances on the green. Love rules the court, the camp, the grove, And men below, and saints above; For love is heaven, and heaven is love.

The youth, who daily farther from the east At length the man perceives it die away, And fade into the light of common day.

Whither is fled the visionary gleam? Where is it now, the glory and the dream?

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, The earth, and every common sight, The glory and the freshness of a dream. It is not now as it hath been of yore— The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

The golden hours on angel wings Flew o’er me and my dearie; For dear to me as light and life Was my sweet Highland Mary.

She is a winsome wee thing, She is a handsome wee thing, She is a lo’esome wee thing,

Ah, gentle dames! it gars me greet To think how monie counsels sweet, How monie lengthened, sage advices, The husband frae the wife despises.

John Anderson my jo, John, When we were first acquent, Your locks were like the raven, Your bonie brow was brent; But now your brow is beld, John, Your locks are like the snaw, But blessings on your frosty pow, John Anderson my jo!

He turn’d him right and round about Upon the Irish shore; And gae his bridle reins a shake, With adieu forevermore, And adieu forevermore!

But to see her was to love her, Love but her, and love forever. Had we never lov’d sae kindly, Had we never lov’d sae blindly, Never met—or never parted— We had ne’er been brokenhearted.

Ae fond kiss, and then we sever; Ae farewell and then forever!

O, my Luve is like a red, red rose, That’s newly sprung in June. O, my Luve is like the melodie, That’s sweetly played in tune.

Love seeketh only self to please, To bind another to its delight, Joys in another’s loss of ease, And builds a Hell in Heaven’s despite.

O Rose, thou art sick. The invisible worm That flies in the night, In the howling storm, Has found out thy bed Of crimson joy, And his dark secret love Does thy life destroy.

Love seeketh not itself to please, Nor for itself hath any care, But for another gives its ease, And builds a Heaven in Hell’s despair.