Thy policy and justice may be seen:
Were dévotioun, wisdom, and honesty
And credence tint, they micht be found in thee.
In another of his poems he describes Edinburgh on a gala day, when there was a procession through its High Street, such as he himself, as Lyon King of Arms, might have marshalled. The occasion was the entry into Edinburgh in May 1537 of Magdalene, daughter of Francis I. of France, the young bride of James V.; and the dirge-like form of the description,—that of an indignant address to Death,—is accounted for by the fact that the poet is looking back on the splendours of her welcome into the Scottish capital when the too swift close of her fair young life, only a few weeks afterwards, had turned them into matter of mournful recollection,—
Thief! Saw thou nocht the great preparatives
Of Edinburgh, the noble famous town?
Thou saw the people labouring for their lives
To mak triumph with trump and clarioun:
Sic pleasour never was in this regioun
As suld have been the day of her entrace,