---
title: "Castle Gordon"
author: "Robert Burns"
form: "Poem"
year: "1787"
location: "Edinburgh"
source: "Project Gutenberg #1279 — Poems and Songs of Robert Burns"
source_url: "https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1279/pg1279.txt"
canonical_url: "https://robert-burns.com/poems/castle-gordon/"
---

# Castle Gordon

## Poem
Streams that glide in orient plains,  
Never bound by Winter’s chains;  
Glowing here on golden sands,  
There immix’d 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 gray,  
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 bonie Castle Gordon.

---

Source: [Project Gutenberg #1279 — Poems and Songs of Robert Burns](https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1279/pg1279.txt)  
Canonical HTML: https://robert-burns.com/poems/castle-gordon/