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By lilye bouir, and silken bedde,

The viewless teiris haif ouir them shedde;
Haif soothit their ardent myndis to sleep,

Or left the cuche of luife to weip.

We haif sein! we have sein!-but the tyme mene come,
And the angelis will blush at the day of doom!

Oh, wald the fayrest of mortyl kynde
Aye keipe thilke holye troths in mynde-
That kyndred spiritis ilk motion see,
Quha watch their wayis with anxious e'e,
And grieve for the guilt of humanitye!
Oh, sweit to hevin the maydenis prayer,
And the siche that hevis ane bosom se fayre!
And deir to hevin the wordis of truthe,
And the praise of vertu fra beautyis muthe!
And deire to the viewless formis of ayre,
The mynde that kythis as the body fayre!

From The Queen's Wake.

A STERN FATHER'S LATE REPENTANCE.

That morning found rough Tushilaw
In all the father's guise appear;
An end of all his hopes he saw
Shrouded in Mary's gilded bier.

No

eye could trace without concern
The suffering warrior's troubled look-
The throbs that heaved his bosom stern
No ear could bear, no heart could brook.

"Woe be to thee, thou wicked dame!
My Mary's prayers and accents mild
Might well have render'd vengeance lame-
This hand could ne'er have slain my child!

"But thou, in frenzied fatal hour,

Reft the sweet life thou gav'st away,
And crush'd to earth the fairest flower
That ever breathed the breeze of day.

"My all is lost, my hope is fled,

The sword shall ne'er be drawn for me;
Unblest, unhonour'd, my grey head-

My child-would I had died for thee!"

The bells tolls o'er a new-made grave;

The lengthen'd funeral train is seen
Stemming the Yarrow's silver wave,
And dark'ning Dryhope holms so green.

From The Queen's Wake.

THE LADY AND THE FIELD OF BATTLE.

What vision lingers on the heath,
Flitting across the field of death?
Its gliding motion, smooth and still
As vapour on the twilight hill,
Or the last ray of falling even

Shed through the parting clouds of heaven?

Is it a sprite that roams forlorn?

Or angel from the bowers of morn,
Come down a tear of heaven to shed,

In pity o'er the valiant dead?

No vain, no fleeting phantom this!

No vision from the bowers of bliss!

Its radiant eye and stately tread

Bespeak some beauteous mountain maid;
No rose of Eden's bosom meek,

Could match that maiden's moisten'd cheek;

No drifted wreath of morning snow

The whiteness of her lofty brow;

Nor gem of India's purest dye,
The lustre of her eagle eye.

When beauty, Eden's bowers within,
First stretch'd the arm to deeds of sin;
When passion burn'd and prudence slept,
The pitying angels bent and wept.
But tears more soft were never shed,
No, not when angels bow'd the head,
A sigh more mild did never breathe
O'er human nature whelm'd in death,
Nor woe and dignity combine
In face so lovely, so benign,
As Douglas saw that dismal hour,
Bent o'er a corse on Cample-moor-
A lady o'er her shield, her trust,
A brave, an only brother's dust.

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What heart of man unmoved can lie,
When plays the smile in beauty's eye?
Or when a form of grace and love
To music's notes can lightly move?
Yes; there are hearts unmoved can see
The smile, the ring, the revelry;
But heart of warrior ne'er could bear
The beam of beauty's crystal tear.
Well was that morn the maxim proved-
The Douglas saw, the Douglas loved.

From The Queen's Wake,

STAFFA.

But now the dreadful strand they gain,
Where rose the sacred dome of the main;
Oft had they seen the place before,
And kept aloof from the dismal shore,
But now it rose before their prow,
And what they beheld they did not know.
The tall grey forms, in close-set file,
Upholding the roof of that holy pile;

The sheets of foam and the clouds of spray,
And the groans that rush'd from the portals grey,
Appall'd their hearts and drove them away.

They wheel'd their bark to the east around,
And moor'd in basin, by rocks imbound;
Then awed to silence, they trode the strand
Where furnaced pillars in order stand,
All framed of the liquid burning levin,
And bent like the bow that spans the heaven,
Or upright ranged in horrid array,

With purfle of green o'er the darksome grey.

Their path was on wondrous pavement of old, Its blocks all cast in some giant mould, Fair hewn and grooved by no mortal hand, With countermure guarded by sea and by land. The watcher Bushella frown'd over their way, Enrobed in the sea-baize, and hooded with grey; The warder that stands by that dome of the deep, With spray-shower and rainbow, the entrance to keep. But when they drew nigh to the chancel of ocean, And saw her waves rush to their raving devotion, Astounded and awed to the antes they clung, And listen'd the hymns in her temple she sung.

The song of the cliff, when the winter winds blow,
The thunder of heaven, the earthquake below,
Conjoin'd, like the voice of a maiden would be,
Compared with the anthem there sung by the sea.

The solemn rows in that darksome den,
Were dimly seen like the forms of men,
Like giant monks in ages agone,

Whom the God of the ocean had sear'd to stone,
And bound in his temple for ever to lean,
In sackcloth of grey and visors of green,
An everlasting worship to keep,

And the big salt tears eternally weep.

So rapid the motion, the whirl, and the boil,
So loud was the tumult, so fierce the turmoil,
Appall'd from those portals of terror they turn,
On pillar of marble their incense to burn.
Around the holy flame they pray—
Then turning their faces all west away,
On angel pavement each bent his knee,
And sung this hymn to the God of the sea.

From The Queen's Wake.

THE MERMAID'S SONG.

Matilda of Skye

Alone may lie,

And list to the wind that whistles by;

Sad may she be,

For deep in the sea,

Deep, deep, deep in the sea,

This night her lover shall sleep with me.
She may turn and hide

From the spirits that glide,

And the ghost that stands at her bed-side;

But never a kiss the vow shall seal,

Nor warm embrace her bosom feel;

For far, far down in the floors below,

Moist as this rock-weed, cold as the snow,

With the eel, and the clam, and the pearl of the deep, On soft sea-flowers her lover shall sleep;

And long and sound shall his slumber be

In the coral bowers of the deep with me.

The trembling sun, far, far away

Shall pour on his couch a soften'd ray,

And his mantle shall wave in the flowing tide,

And the little fishes shall turn aside;

But the waves and the tides of the sea shall cease,
Ere wakes her love from his bed of peace.
No home!-no kiss!—No, never! never!
His couch is spread for ever and ever.

From The Queen's Wake.

THE HARP OF SCOTLAND.

Long has that harp, of magic tone,
To all the minstrel world been known:
Who has not heard her witching lays,
Of Ettrick banks and Yarrow braes?
But that sweet bard, who sung and play'd
Óf

many a feat and border raid,

Of many a knight and lovely maid,

When forced to leave his harp behind,
Did all her tuneful chords unwind;

And many ages pass'd and came
Ere man so well could tune the same.

Bangour the daring task essay'd:
Not half the chords his fingers play'd;
Yet even then some thrilling lays
Bespoke the harp of ancient days.

Redoubted Ramsay's peasant skill
Flung some strain'd notes along the hill;
His was some lyre from lady's hall,
And not the mountain harp at all.

Langhorne arrived from southern dale,
And chimed his notes on Yarrow vale;
They would not, could not, touch the heart-
His was the modish lyre of art.

Sweet rung the harp to Logan's hand:
Then Leyden came from border land,
With dauntless heart and ardour high,
And wild impatience in his eye.
Though false his tones at times might be,
Though wild notes marr'd the symphony

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