XXVIII.
A kindly heart had brave Fitz-James;
Fast pour’d his eyes at pity’s claims;
And now with mingled grief and ire,
He saw the murder’d maid expire.
“God, in my need, be my relief,
As I wreak this on yonder Chief!”
A lock from Blanche’s tresses fair
He blended with her bridegroom’s hair;
The mingled braid in blood he dyed,
And placed it on his bonnet-side:
“By Him whose word is truth! I swear,
No other favor will I wear,
Till this sad token I imbrue
In the best blood of Roderick Dhu.
—But hark! what means yon faint halloo?
The chase is up,—but they shall know,
The stag at bay’s a dangerous foe.”
Barr’d from the known but guarded way,
Through copse and cliffs Fitz-James must stray,
And oft must change his desperate track,
By stream and precipice turn’d back.
Heartless, fatigued, and faint, at length,
From lack of food and loss of strength,
He couch’d him in a thicket hoar,
And thought his toils and perils o’er:—
“Of all my rash adventures past,
This frantic feat must prove the last!
Who e’er so mad but might have guess’d,
That all this Highland hornet’s nest
Would muster up in swarms so soon
As e’er they heard of bands[271] at Doune?
Like bloodhounds now they search me out,—
Hark, to the whistle and the shout!—
If farther through the wilds I go,
I only fall upon the foe:
I’ll couch me here till evening gray,
Then darkling try my dangerous way.”