To fall on thine own head?
Death! death! inevitable death!
Driven by the breath of God,
A column of the desert met his way.”
Nor, among the lyrical pieces of the same poet, be forgotten that ballad of the Inchcape rock, which tells how the bell put up by the abbot of Aberbrothok to warn ships of their peril, was taken down by a sea pirate, Sir Ralph the Rover, who in the words of an old Scottish topographer, “a yeare thereafter perished upon the same rocke, with ship and goodes, in the righteous judgment of God.” Many and many
“stories have been told of men whose lives
Were infamous, and so their end. I mean
That the red murderer has himself been murdered;
The traitor struck with treason; he who let
The orphan perish came himself to want: