We handled our rifles, and looked to the priming.
But, stay! is this real, or only delusion?
What means their blank terror, their sudden confusion?
The whole of the foemen seem stricken with one dread—
’Tis Colonel John Harper, with horsemen a hundred!
We gaze but a moment in rapture and wonder—
Rides Harper like lightning, we fall like the thunder.
To saddle, M’Donald! your doom has been spoken;
The tigers are on you, the bars have been broken.
Whose horse is the swiftest may ride from the foray;