Yet if by chance the cry
Of the sharp pibroch through the palace thrill’d,
He felt the pang of high hope unfulfill’d:—
And once, when one came by
With the dear name of Scotland on his lips,
The heart broke forth behind that forty-years’ eclipse,
4
Triumphant in its pain:—
Then the old days of Holyrood halls return’d
The leaden lethargy from his soul he spurn’d,
And was the Prince again:—
All Scotland waking in him; all her bold
Chieftains and clans:—and all their tale, and his, he told:
5
—Told how, o’er the boisterous seas
From faithless France he danced his way
Where Alban’s thousand islands lay,
The kelp-strown ridge of the lone Hebrides:—
How down each strath they stream’d as springtide rills,
When he to Finnan vale
Came from Glenaladale,
And that snow-handful grew an avalanche of the hills.
6
There Lochiel, Glengarry there,
Macdonald, Cameron: souls untried
In war, but stout in mountain-pride
All odds against all worlds to laugh and dare:
Unpurchaseable faith of chief and clan!
Enough! Their Prince has thrown
Himself upon his own!
By hearts not heads they count, and manhood measures man!
7
—Torrent from Lochaber sprung,
Through Badenoch bare and Athole turn’d,
The fettering Forth o’erpast and spurn’d,
Then on the smiling South in fury flung;