Castle Gordon (Robert Burns) –Andrew Calhoun

Castle Gordon
intended to be sung to Morag—

Streams that glide in orient plains,
Never bound by Winter’s chains;
Glowing here on golden sands,
There commixed with foulest stains
From Tyranny’s empurpled hands:
These, their richly gleaming waves,
I leave to tyrants and their slaves,
Give me the stream that sweetly laves
The banks by Castle Gordon.

Spicy forests, ever gay,
Shading from the burning ray
Hapless wretches sold to toil;
Or the ruthless Native’s way,
Bent on slaughter, blood and spoil,
Woods that ever verdant wave,
I leave the tyrant and the slave,
Give me the groves that lofty brave
The storms, by Castle Gordon.

Wildly here without control,
Nature reigns and rules the whole;
In that sober pensive mood,
Dearest to the feeling soul,
She plants the forest, pours the flood:
Life’s poor day I’ll musing rave,
And find at night a sheltering cave,
Where waters flow and wild woods wave
By bonny Castle Gordon.

Text from James Currie's Works of Robert Burns (1800.) The tune, "Morag," is found in Daniel Dow’s Ancient Scots Music (1778),. Arrangement follows Dow’s unusual chromatic bass line.