All the jolly chase is here,
With hawk, and horse, and hunting-spear!
Hounds are in their couples yelling,
Hawks are whistling, horns are knelling,
Merrily, merrily, mingle they--
"Waken, lords and ladies gay."

Waken, lords and ladies gay,
The mist has left the mountain gray,
Springlets in the dawn are steaming,
Diamonds on the brake are gleaming:
And foresters have busy been
To track the buck in thicket green;
Now we come to chant our lay,
"Waken, lords and ladies gay."

Waken, lords and ladies gay,
To the green-wood haste away;
We can shew you where he lies,
Fleet of foot and tall of size;
We can shew the marks he made
When 'gainst the oak his antlers fray'd;
You shall see him brought to bay,
"Waken, lords and ladies gay."

Louder, louder chant the lay,
Waken, lords and ladies gay!
Tell them youth, and mirth, and glee,
Run a course as well as we;
Time, stern huntsman! who can baulk,
Stanch as hound, and fleet as hawk?
Think of this, and rise with day,
Gentle lords and ladies gay.

[86] First published in the continuation of Strutt's Queenhoohall, 1808,
inserted in the _Edinburgh Annual Register_, of the same year, and set
to a Welsh air in Thomson's _Select Melodies_, vol. iii., 1817.

OH, SAY NOT, MY LOVE, WITH THAT MORTIFIED AIR.

Oh, say not, my love, with that mortified air,
That your spring-time of pleasure is flown;
Nor bid me to maids that are younger repair,
For those raptures that still are thine own.

Though April his temples may wreathe with the vine,
Its tendrils in infancy curl'd;
'Tis the ardour of August matures us the wine,
Whose life-blood enlivens the world.

Though thy form, that was fashion'd as light as a fay's,
Has assumed a proportion more round,
And thy glance, that was bright as a falcon's at gaze,
Looks soberly now on the ground--

Enough, after absence to meet me again,
Thy steps still with ecstacy move;
Enough, that those dear sober glances retain
For me the kind language of love.

* * * * *

METRICAL TRANSLATIONS

FROM

The Modern Gaelic Minstrelsy.

* * * * *

ROBERT MACKAY (ROB DONN).

Robert Mackay, called _Donn_, from the colour of his hair, which was
brown or ches