A SONG OF BEN LEDI
(Perthshire)
John Stuart Blackie
(1809-1895)
Professor of Greek at the University of Edinburgh

Come, sit on Ledi’s old grey peak,
And sing a song with me,
Where the wild bird whirrs o'er the mosses bleak,
And the wild wind whistles free!
’Tis sweet to lie on the tufted down,
Low, low in the gowany glen ;
But proud is the foot that stands on the crown
Of the glorious Ledi Ben.

Come hither, ye townsmen, soot-besoiled,
Who cower in dingy nooks,
On whom no ray of the sun hath smiled,
To shame your sombre looks.
Come, closely mewed in steaming lanes,
Whom musty chambers pen,
And look abroad on the world of God
From the top of this glorious Ben!

Come ye who sit with moody pains,
And curious-peering looks,
Clogging the veins of your laden brains
With the dust of your maundering books.
Not in your own dim groping souls,
Nor in words of babbling men,
But here His wonders God unrolls—
On the peak of the Ledi Ben.

Look forth on these far-stretching rows
Of huge-ridged mountains high ;
There God His living Epos shows
Of powers that never die.
Far north, far west, each glowing crest
Thy sateless view may ken,
Where proudly they stand to rampart the land,
With this glorious Ledi Ben.

And lo! where eastward, far beneath,
The broad and leafy plain
Spreads on the banks of silvery Teith
Stout labour’s fair domain ;
The smoke from the long white-glancing town,
The loch that gleams in the glen,
All rush to thine eye when castled high
On this glorious Ledi Ben.

Come, sit with me, ye sons of the free,
Join hearty hand to hand,
And claim your part in the iron heart
Of the Grampian-girded land ;
Soft lands of the South on rosy beds
May cradle smoother men,
But the Northern knows his strength when he treads
The heath of the old grey Ben.

Come, sit with me and praise with glee,
On the peak of this granite Ben,
The brave old land, where the stream leaps free
Down the rifts of the sounding glen.
Land of strong hands and glowing hearts,
And mother of stalwart men,
Who nurse free thoughts where the wild breeze floats
On the peak of the Ledi Ben.

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