For Love of Bonnie Scotland

Don't tell me what my eyes have seen!
For my eyes have seen beyond the pale.
Don't tell me where I've never been
for my soul has soared above the vale.
Don't tell me what I cannot write!
For I've trekked a thousand hills in flight
and run through highland mountain streams
and climbed Ben Vorlich in my dreams.

These mortal eyes have never chanced
on bonnie Scotland nor mountain crag,
but my spirit's eye has often glanced
and rested on Scott's panting stag.
My spirit has stretched wide and far
with visions of terrible Uam-Var.
I saw fair Blanche, bleeding, lay
upon the heath and dying, say,
"Avenge me on the hill and dell.
Avenge my love...O God...farewell!"

What right have you to tell me
that I cannae breathe or speak
or write of loch and valley
or rugged highland peak?
Would you forbid the lunar flight
of Verne's imagination?
Or censor cheers of Burns' birth night
from those not of his nation?
So don't tell me what my eyes have seen.
Don't tell me what I cannot write
for my soul has seen where I've never been
and the inner vision burns bright
with the dancing fires of dark Beltane
and a shining man called Snowdoun's Knight.

(I wrote this one night after a colleague berated me for my poem about Brigadoon, telling me I should not write about Scotland since I have not yet traveled there. But since I was a child, I had read and re-read Sir Walter Scott's Lady of the Lake and marveled at the ease with which his verses seemed to flow. And how many times did I lose myself in Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped or Treasure Island? Most of the references in the poem come from the Lady of the Lake. )