| |
| O LISTEN, 1 listen, ladies gay! | |
| No haughty feat of arms I tell; | |
| Soft is the note, and sad the lay, | |
| That mourns the lovely Rosabelle. | |
| |
| ‘Moor, moor the barge, ye gallant crew! | 5 |
| And, gentle Ladye, deign to stay! | |
| Rest thee in Castle Ravensheuch, | |
| Nor tempt the stormy firth to-day. | |
| |
| ‘The blackening wave is edged with white; | |
| To inch and rock the sea-mews fly; | 10 |
| The fishers have heard the Water-Sprite, | |
| Whose screams forbode that wreck is nigh. | |
| |
| ‘Last night the gifted Seer did view | |
| A wet shroud swathed round ladye gay; | |
| Then stay thee, Fair, in Ravensheuch; | 15 |
| Why cross the gloomy firth to-day?’— | |
| |
| ‘’Tis not because Lord Lindesay’s heir | |
| To-night at Roslin leads the ball, | |
| But that my ladye-mother there | |
| Sits lonely in her castle-hall. | 20 |
| |
| ‘’Tis not because the ring they ride, | |
| And Lindesay at the ring rides well, | |
| But that my sire the wine will chide, | |
| If ’tis not fill’d by Rosabelle.’— | |
| |
| O’er Roslin all that dreary night, | 25 |
| A wondrous blaze was seen to gleam; | |
| ’Twas broader than the watch-fire’s light, | |
| And redder than the bright moonbeam. | |
| |
| It glared on Roslin’s castled rock, | |
| It ruddied all the copse-wood glen; | 30 |
| ’Twas seen from Dryden’s groves of oak, | |
| And seen from cavern’d Hawthornden. | |
| |
| Seem’d all on fire that chapel proud, | |
| Where Roslin’s chiefs uncoffin’d lie, | |
| Each Baron, for a sable shroud, | 35 |
| Sheathed in his iron panoply. | |
| |
| Seem’d all on fire within, around, | |
| Deep sacristy and altar’s pale; | |
| Shone every pillar foliage-bound, | |
| And glimmer’d all the dead men’s mail. | 40 |
| |
| Blazed battlement and pinnet high, | |
| Blazed every rose-carved buttress fair— | |
| So still they blaze, when fate is nigh, | |
| The lordly line of high St. Clair. | |
| |
| There are twenty of Roslin’s barons bold | 45 |
| Lie buried within that proud chapelle; | |
| Each one the holy vault doth hold— | |
| But the sea holds lovely Rosabelle! | |
| |
| And each St. Clair was buried there, | |
| With candle, with book, and with knell; | 50 |
| But the sea-caves rung, and the wild winds sung, | |
| The dirge of lovely Rosabelle! | |
