128 ANGLING SKETCHES 



He kept his promise, given in the following 

 verse : 



And I, when to breathe is a labour, and joy 

 Forgets me, and life is no longer the boy, 

 On the labouring staff, and the tremorous knee, 

 Will wander, bright river, to thee ! 



Life is always ' the boy ' when one is beside 

 the Tweed. Times change, and we change, for 

 the worse. But the river changes little. Still he 

 courses through the keen and narrow rocks be- 

 neath the bridge of Yair. 



From Yair, which hills so closely bind, 

 Scarce can the Tweed his passage find, 

 Though much he fret, and chafe, and toil, 

 Till all his eddying currents boil. 



Still the water loiters by the long boat-pool of 

 Yair, as though loath to leave the drooping boughs 

 of the elms. Still it courses with a deep eddy 

 through the Elm Wheel, and ripples under 

 Fernilea, where the author of the ' Flowers of the 

 Forest ' lived in that now mouldering and roofless 

 hall, with the peaked turrets. Still Neidpath is 

 fair, Neidpath of the unhappy maid, and still we 

 mark the tiny burn at Ashiesteil, how in November, 



