THE ANCIENT SACRIFICE
Ye dead and gone great armies of the world,
Sweet gleam the fields where ye were used to pass,
With Death for leader, legioned like the grass,
Day after day by dews of morning pearled.
Ye dead and gone great armies, ye were hurled
’Gainst other armies, great and dead and gone,
In awful dark: ye died before the dawn,
Ne’er knowing how your flags in peace are furled!
Ye are the tall fair forests that were felled
To build a pyre for strife that it might cease;
Ye are the white lambs slaughtered to bring peace;
Ye are the sweet ships sunk that storm be quelled;
And ye are lilies plucked and set like stars
About the blood-stained shrine of bygone wars!
The Bellman Mahlon Leonard Fisher
THE PIPES OF THE NORTH
Do ye hear ’em sternly soundin’ through the noises of the street,
O heart from the heather overseas?
Do ye leap up to greet ’em, does your pulse skip a beat?
There’s a lad with a plaid and naked knees.
Here where all is strange and foreign to the swing of kilt and sporran,
With his head proud and high and a lightin’ in his eye,
He’s skirlin’ ’em, he’s dirlin’ ’em, he’s blowin’ like a storm—
O pipes of the North, O the pibroch pourin’ forth,
You’re fierce and loud as Winter but ye make the blood run warm!
All the battle-names of story, all the jewel-names of song
Down the spate of the clangor swing and reel,
And the claymores come a-flashin’ for a thousand years along
From Can-More to bonnie Charlie and Lochiel.
Though the high-singin’ bugle and the brazen crashin’ fugue’ll—
With the drum and the fife—wake the trampin’ lines to life,
But neighin’ ’em, and brayin’ ’em, and shatterin’ all the air,
O pipes of the North, when the legions thunder forth
There’s naught like ye to lift ’em on to death or glory there!
Now he tunes an ancient ditty for the leal Highland lover,
A rill of the mountain clear and pure,
How the bee is in the blossom and the peewit passin’ over
And the cloud-shadows chasin’ on the moor.
Hark the carol of the chanter rollickin’ a skeltin’ canter,
And the hum of the drones with their “wind-arisin’” tones!
He’s flightin’ ’em, he’s kitin’ ’em, he’s flingin’ gay and free—
O pipes of the North, when the reel comes tumblin’ forth
’Tis the breeze amid the bracken or the wavelets on the sea!