There's deer upon the mountain
There's sheep along the glen
The forests hum with feather
But where are now the men?
Here's but my mother's garden
Where soft the footsteps fall
My folk are quite forgotten
But the nettle's over all

O! Black might be that ruin
Where my fathers dwelt so long
And nothing hide the shame of it
The ugliness and wrong
The cabar and the corner-stone
Might bleach in wind and rains
But for the gentle nettle
That took such a courtier's pains

The friends are all departed
The hearth-stone is black and cold
And sturdy grows the nettle
On the place beloved of old