DIRGE OF WALLACE.

They lighted the tapers at dead of night,

And chanted their holiest hymn,

But her brow and her bosom were damp with affright,

Her eye was all sleepless and dim.

And the lady of Elderslie wept for her lord,

When a deathwatch beat in her lonely room,

When her curtain had shook of its own accord,

And the raven had flapped at her window board,

To tell of her warrior’s doom.

Now sing the death-song and loudly pray

For the soul of my knight so dear,

And call me a widow this wretched day,

Since the warning of God is here.

For a nightmare rides on my strangled sleep—

The lord of my bosom is doomed to die;

His valorous heart they have wounded deep,

And the blood-red tears shall his country weep,

For Wallace of Elderslie.

Yet knew not his country that ominous hour,

Ere the loud matin bell was rung,

That a trumpet of death on an English tower

Had the dirge of her champion sung.

When his dungeon light looked dim and red

On the high-born blood of a martyr slain,

No anthem was sung at his holy death-bed;

No weeping was there when his bosom bled,

And his heart was rent in twain.

Oh! it was not thus when his ashen spear

Was true to that knight forlorn,

And hosts of a thousand were scattered like deer,

At the sound of the hunter’s horn!

When he strode o’er the wreck of each well-fought field,

With the yellow-haired chiefs of his native land;

For his lance was not shivered on helmet or shield,

And the sword that seemed fit for archangel to wield,

Was light in his terrible hand.

But bleeding and bound though “the Wallace wight,”

For his much-loved country die,

The bugle ne’er sung to a braver knight

Than Wallace of Elderslie.

But the day of his glory shall never depart,

His head unentombed shall with glory be palmed,

From its blood-streaming altar his spirit shall start;

Though the raven has fed on his mouldering heart—

A nobler was never embalmed.

JEMIMA, ROSE, AND ELEANORE;
THREE CELEBRATED SCOTTISH BEAUTIES.

Adieu! Romance’s heroines—

Give me the nymphs who this good hour

May charm me, not in Fiction’s scenes,

But teach me Beauty’s living power.

My harp that has been mute too long

Shall sleep at Beauty’s name no more,

So but your smiles reward my song—

Jemima, Rose, and Eleanore.

In whose benignant eyes are beaming

The rays of purity and truth;

Such as we fancy woman’s seeming

In the creation’s golden youth.

The more I look upon thy grace,

Rosina, I could look the more;

But for Jemima’s witching face,

And the sweet smile of Eleanore.

Had I been Lawrence, kings had wanted

Their portraits, till I painted yours;

And these had future hearts enchanted,

When this poor verse no more endures.

I would have left the Congress faces,

A dull-eyed diplomatic corps,

Till I had grouped you as the Graces—

Jemima, Rose, and Eleanore.

The Catholic bids fair saints befriend him,

Your poet’s heart is Catholic too;

His rosary shall be flowers ye send him,

His saints’ days when he visits you.

And my sere laurels for my duty,

Miraculous at your touch would rise;

Could I give verse one trait of beauty

Like that which glads me from your eyes.

Unsealed by you these lips have spoken,

Disused to song for many a day,

Ye’ve tuned a harp whose strings were broken,

And warmed a heart of callous clay;

So when my fancy next refuses

To twine for you a garland more,

Come back again and be my Muses—

Jemima, Rose, and Eleanore.

THE
DEATH-BOAT OF HELIGOLAND

Can restlessness reach the cold sepulchred head?—

Ay, the quick have their sleep-walkers, so have the dead

There are brains, though they moulder, that dream in the tomb,

And that maddening forehear the last trumpet of doom,

Till their corses start sheeted to revel on earth,

Making horror more deep by the semblance of mirth:

By the glare of new-lighted volcanoes they dance,

Or at mid-sea appal the chilled mariner’s glance.

Such I wot, was the band of cadaverous smile

Seen ploughing the night-surge of Heligo’s isle.

The foam of the Baltic had sparkled like fire,

And the red moon looked down with an aspect of ire;

But her beams on a sudden grew sick-like and grey,

And the mews that had slept clanged and shrieked far away

And the buoys and the beacons extinguished their light,

As the boat of the stony-eyed dead came in sight,

High bounding from billow to billow; each form

Had its shroud like a plaid flying loose to the storm;

With an oar in each pulseless and icy-cold hand,

Fast they ploughed, by the lee-shore of Heligoland,

Such breakers as boat of the living ne’er crossed;

Now surf-sunk for minutes again they uptossed,

And with livid lips shouted reply o’er the flood

To the challenging watchman that curdled his blood—

“We are dead—we are bound from our graces in the west,

First to Hecla, and then to——” Unmeet was the rest

For man’s ear. The old abbey bell thundered its clang,

And their eyes gleamed with phosphorous light as it rang

Ere they vanished, they stopped, and gazed silently grim,

Till the eye could define them, garb, feature and limb

Now who were those roamers?—of gallows or wheel

Bore they marks, or the mangling anatomist’s steel?

No, by magistrates’ chains ’mid their grave-clothes you saw,

They were felons too proud to have perished by law;

But a ribbon that hung where a rope should have been,

’Twas the badge of their faction, its hue was not green,

Showed them men who had trampled and tortured and driven

To rebellion the fairest Isle breathed on by Heaven,—

Men whose heirs would yet finish the tyrannous task,

If the Truth and the Time had not dragged off their mask.

They parted—but not till the sight might discern

A scutcheon distinct at their pinnace’s stern,

Where letters emblazoned in blood-coloured flame,

Named their faction—I blot not my page with its name.