PART FIRST.--CONTINUED.

_HISTORICAL BALLADS._




LESLY'S MARCH.


"But, O my country! how shall memory trace
"Thy glories, lost in either Charles's days,
"When through thy fields destructive rapine spread,
"Nor sparing infants' tears, nor hoary head!
"In those dread days, the unprotected swain
"Mourn'd, in the mountains, o'er his wasted plain;
"Nor longer vocal, with the shepherd's lay,
"Were Yarrow's banks, or groves of Endermay."
LANGHORN--_Genius and Valour_.


Such are the verses, in which a modern bard has painted the desolate
state of Scotland, during a period highly unfavourable to poetical
composition. Yet the civil and religious wars of the seventeenth century
have afforded some subjects for traditionary poetry, and the reader is
here presented with the ballads of that disastrous aera. Some prefatory
history may not be unacceptable.