VIII.

“But ah! dear lady, thus it sigh’d

The eve thy sainted mother died;

And such the sounds which, while I strove

To wake a lay of war or love,

Came marring all the festal mirth,

Appalling me who gave them birth,

And, disobedient to my call,

Wail’d loud through Bothwell’s [94] banner’d hall,

Ere Douglases, to ruin driven,

Were exiled from their native heaven.—

Oh! if yet worse mishap and woe

My master’s house must undergo,

Or aught but weal to Ellen fair

Brood in these accents of despair,

No future bard, sad Harp! shall fling

Triumph or rapture from thy string;

One short, one final strain shall flow,

Fraught with unutterable woe,

Then shiver’d shall thy fragments lie,

Thy master cast him down and die!”