Now gather head with all thine affluent force,
Draw forth the wild mellay!
At Gladsmuir is the fray;
Scotland ’gainst England match’d: White Rose against White Horse!
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Cluster’d down the slope they go,
Red clumps of ragged valour, down,
While morn-mists yet the hill-top crown:—
Clan Colla! on!—the Camerons touch the foe!
One touch!—the battle breaks, the fight is fought,
As summit-boulders glide
Riddling the forest-side,
And in one moment’s crash an army melts to nought!
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—Ah gay nights of Holyrood!
Star-eyes of Scotland’s fairest fair,
Sun-glintings of the golden hair,
Life’s tide at full in that brief interlude!
Then as a bark slips from her natural coast
Deep into seas unknown,
Scotland went forth alone,
Unfriended, unallied; a handful ’gainst a host.
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By the Bolder moorlands bare,
By faithless Solway’s glistening sands,
And where Caer Luel’s dungeon stands,
Huge keep of ancient Urien, huge, foursquare:—
Preston, and loyal Lancashire; . . . and then
From central Derby down,
To strike the royal town,
And to his German realm the usurper thrust again!
—O the lithesome mountaineers,
Wild hearts with kingly boyhood high,
And victory in each forward eye,
While stainless honour his white banner rears!
Then all the air with mountain-music thrill’d,
The bonnets o’er the brow,—
My gallant clans! . . . and now
The voices closed in earth, in death the pibroch still’d!
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