---
title: "Verses Written with a Pencil"
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/verses-written-with-a-pencil/"
---

# Verses Written with a Pencil

## Preface
Over the Chimney—piece in the Parlour of the Inn at Kenmore, Taymouth.

## Poem
Admiring Nature in her wildest grace,  
These northern scenes with weary feet I trace;  
O’er many a winding dale and painful steep,  
Th’ abodes of covey’d grouse and timid sheep,

My savage journey, curious, I pursue,  
Till fam’d Breadalbane opens to my view.—  
The meeting cliffs each deep-sunk glen divides,  
The woods wild scatter’d, clothe their ample sides;  
Th’ outstretching lake, imbosomed ’mong the hills,  
The eye with wonder and amazement fills;  
The Tay meand’ring sweet in infant pride,  
The palace rising on his verdant side,  
The lawns wood-fring’d in Nature’s native taste,  
The hillocks dropt in Nature’s careless haste,  
The arches striding o’er the new-born stream,  
The village glittering in the noontide beam—

Poetic ardours in my bosom swell,  
Lone wand’ring by the hermit’s mossy cell;  
The sweeping theatre of hanging woods,  
Th’ incessant roar of headlong tumbling floods—

Here Poesy might wake her heav’n-taught lyre,  
And look through Nature with creative fire;  
Here, to the wrongs of Fate half reconcil’d,  
Misfortunes lighten’d steps might wander wild;  
And Disappointment, in these lonely bounds,  
Find balm to soothe her bitter, rankling wounds:  
Here heart-struck Grief might heav’nward stretch her scan,  
And injur’d Worth forget and pardon man.

## Footnotes
1. These are rhymes of dubious authenticity.—Lang.

---

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/verses-written-with-a-pencil/