JOY, joy in London now! | |
| He goes, the rebel Wallace goes to death; | |
| At length the traitor meets the traitor’s doom, | |
| Joy, joy in London now! | |
| |
| He on a sledge is drawn, | 5 |
| His strong right arm unweaponed and in chains, | |
| And garlanded around his helmless head | |
| The laurel wreath of scorn. | |
| |
| They throng to view him now, | |
| Who in the field had fled before his sword, | 10 |
| Who at the name of Wallace once grew pale | |
| And faltered out a prayer. | |
| |
| Yes! they can meet his eye, | |
| That only beams with patient courage now; | |
| Yes! they can look upon those manly limbs, | 15 |
| Defenceless now and bound. | |
| |
| And that eye did not shrink | |
| As he beheld the pomp of infamy; | |
| Nor one ungoverned feeling shook those limbs, | |
| When the last moment came. | 20 |
| |
| What though suspended sense | |
| Was by their legal cruelty revived; | |
| What though ingenious vengeance lengthened life | |
| To feel protracted death? | |
| |
| What though the hangman’s hand | 25 |
| Grasped in his living breast the heaving heart?— | |
| In the last agony, the last sick pang, | |
| Wallace had comfort still. | |
| |
| He called to mind his deeds | |
| Done for his country in the embattled field; | 30 |
| He thought of that good cause for which he died, | |
| And it was joy in death. | |
| |
| Go, Edward! triumph now! | |
| Cambria is fallen, and Scotland’s strength is crushed; | |
| On Wallace, on Llewellyn’s mangled limbs, | 35 |
| The fowls of heaven have fed. | |
| |
| Unrivalled, unopposed, | |
| Go Edward, full of glory to thy grave! | |
| The weight of patriot blood upon thy soul, | |
| Go Edward, to thy God! | 40 |
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