From “Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers”
DO not lift him from the bracken, | |
| Leave him lying where he fell— | |
| Better bier ye cannot fashion: | |
| None beseems him half so well | |
| As the bare and broken heather, | 5 |
| And the hard and trampled sod, | |
| Whence his angry soul ascended | |
| To the judgment-seat of God! | |
| Winding-sheet we cannot give him— | |
| Seek no mantle for the dead, | 10 |
| Save the cold and spotless covering | |
| Showered from heaven upon his head. | |
| Leave his broadsword, as we found it, | |
| Bent and broken with the blow, | |
| That, before he died, avenged him | 15 |
| On the foremost of the foe. | |
| Leave the blood upon his bosom— | |
| Wash not off that sacred stain: | |
| Let it stiffen on the tartan, | |
| Let his wounds unclosed remain, | 20 |
| Till the day when he shall show them | |
| At the throne of God on high, | |
| When the murderer and the murdered | |
| Meet before their Judge’s eye! | |
| |
| Nay—ye should not weep, my children! | 25 |
| Leave it to the faint and weak; | |
| Sobs are but a woman’s weapon— | |
| Tears befit a maiden’s cheek. | |
| Weep not, children of Macdonald! | |
| Weep not thou, his orphan heir— | 30 |
| Not in shame, but stainless honour, | |
| Lies thy slaughtered father there. | |
| Weep not—but when years are over, | |
| And thine arm is strong and sure, | |
| And thy foot is swift and steady | 35 |
| On the mountain and the muir— | |
| Let thy heart be hard as iron, | |
| And thy wrath as fierce as fire, | |
| Till the hour when vengeance cometh | |
| For the race that slew thy sire; | 40 |
| Till in deep and dark Glenlyon | |
| Rise a louder shriek of woe | |
| Than at midnight, from their eyrie, | |
| Scared the eagles of Glencoe; | |
| Louder than the screams that mingled | 45 |
| With the howling of the blast, | |
| When the murderer’s steel was clashing, | |
| And the fires were rising fast: | |
| When thy noble father bounded | |
| To the rescue of his men, | 50 |
| And the slogan of our kindred | |
| Pealed throughout the startled glen; | |
| When the herd of frantic women | |
| Stumbled through the midnight snow, | |
| With their fathers’ houses blazing, | 55 |
| And their dearest dead below. | |
| Oh, the horror of the tempest, | |
| As the flashing drift was blown, | |
| Crimsoned with the conflagration, | |
| And the roofs went thundering down! | 60 |
| Oh, the prayers—the prayers and curses | |
| That together winged their flight | |
| From the maddened hearts of many | |
| Through that long and woeful night! | |
| Till the fires began to dwindle, | 65 |
| And the shots grew faint and few, | |
| And we heard the foeman’s challenge | |
| Only in a far halloo; | |
| Till the silence once more settled | |
| O’er the gorges of the glen, | 70 |
| Broken only by the Cona | |
| Plunging through its naked den. | |
| Slowly from the mountain-summit | |
| Was the drifting veil withdrawn, | |
| And the ghastly valley glimmered | 75 |
| In the gray December dawn. | |
| Better had the morning never | |
| Dawned upon our dark despair! | |
| Black amidst the common whiteness | |
| Rose the spectral ruins there: | 80 |
| But the sight of these was nothing | |
| More than wrings the wild dove’s breast, | |
| When she searches for her offspring | |
| Round the relics of her nest. | |
| For in many a spot the tartan | 85 |
| Peered above the wintry heap, | |
| Marking where a dead Macdonald | |
| Lay within his frozen sleep. | |
| Tremblingly we scooped the covering | |
| From each kindred victim’s head, | 90 |
| And the living lips were burning | |
| On the cold ones of the dead. | |
| And I left them with their dearest— | |
| Dearest charge had everyone— | |
| Left the maiden with her lover, | 95 |
| Left the mother with her son. | |
| I alone of all was mateless— | |
| Far more wretched I than they, | |
| For the snow would not discover | |
| Where my lord and husband lay. | 100 |
| But I wandered up the valley | |
| Till I found him lying low, | |
| With the gash upon his bosom, | |
| And the frown upon his brow— | |
| Till I found him lying murdered | 105 |
| Where he wooed me long ago. | |
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