In clouds of gloom athwart our sky.
Well in our slumber may we start:
He warned, ere hence he did depart,
That from the ominous day to come
He would be taken to his home.
As Lot was saved from Sodom’s fate
Ere God poured out His fury great,
So judgment from the Lord we dread
Since good Macphail, our guide, is dead!
In the “Elegy” we find several good verses bearing on the subject of patronage in the Church of Scotland. They show us how galling that yoke of Parliament was always felt to be; and how clearly Bible-cultured people, of no pretence to a knowledge of the mysteries of statecraft, discern the radical ills by which communities and individuals are fatally afflicted. It was only in 1874 that statesmen legislatively acknowledged the evils which were so patent to the poetic eye of MacLauchlan of Abriachan a century before:—