17
Faithful in a faithless age!
Yet happier, in that death-dew drench’d,
In each rude hand the claymore clench’d,
Than who, to soothe a nation’s craven rage,
To the red scaffold went with steady eye,
And the red martyr-grave,
For one, who could not save!
Who only lives to weep the weight of life, and die!
18
—He ended, with such grief
As fits and honours manhood:—Then, once more
Weaving that long romantic lay, told o’er
The names of clan and chief
Who perill’d all for him, and died;—and how
In islets, caves, and clefts, and bare high mountain-brow
19
The wanderer hid, and all
His Odyssey of woes!—Then, agonized
Not by the wrongs he suffer’d and despised,
But for the Cause’s fall,—
The faces, loved and lost, that for his sake
Were raven-torn and blanch’d, high on the traitor’s stake,
20
As on Drummossie drear
They fell,—as a dead body falls,—so he;
Swoon-senseless at that killing memory
Seen across year on year:
O human tears! O honourable pain!
Pity unchill’d by age, and wounds that bleed again!
21