She's traveled almost everywhere To cities, valleys, islands: But longs now just to breathe the air Out in the verdant Highlands To walk along a keening wall Among the Summer heather; To stay until the mordant Fall Brings cold and windy weather She hears the pipes of old come through The ancient voices call her; The modern mother turns again Into the ancestral daughter
The wind blew warm that day, so warm
Her red-brown hair blew ’round her face;
She moved forward to touch me with
An air of faint pity, and grace
I said that I’d be leaving soon
To travel on, complete my search;
From Falkirk where I left my heart
Entombed within her speckled church
She lifted me from my lower canal
To one much higher, where her waters ran
The wheel, it kept on turning, as it does
And it was over soon, as it began
She was an auburn freckled Scottish lass
And I a scholar, way over my head
The wheel that lifted me to waters new
Now lifted someone else for her, instead
