Twilight on Tweed
Andrew Lang
Three crests against the saffron sky,
Beyond the purple plain,
The dear remembered melody
Of Tweed once more again.
Wan water from the border hills,
Dear voice from the old years,
Thy distant music lulls and stills,
And moves to quiet tears.
Like a loved ghost thy fabled flood
Fleets through the dusky land;
Where Scott, come home to die, has stood,
My feet returning stand.
A mist of memory broods and floats,
The border waters flow;
The air is full of ballad notes,
Borne out of long ago.
Old songs that sung themselves to me,
Sweet through a boy's day dream,
While trout below the blossom'd tree
Plashed in the golden stream.
* * * * * *
Twilight, and Tweed, and Eildon Hill,
Fair and thrice fair you be;
You tell me that the voice is still
That should have welcomed me.
Eildon Hill has three separate peaks - the "three crests "of the poem.
Scott's View, looking over the River Tweed towards Eildon Hill, is reputed to be one of the favourite views of the great Scottish writer, Sir Walter Scott. The story goes that the horses pulling his coffin stopped there on the way to his burial to give their master one last look at the view.
Poetry Atlas has many other poems about Scotland.
