If ever breath of British gale
Shall fan the tricolor,
Or footstep of invader rude,
With rapine foul, and red with blood,
Pollute our happy shore—
Then farewell home! and farewell friends!
Adieu each tender tie!
Resolved, we mingle in the tide,
Where charging squadrons furious ride,
To conquer or to die.
To horse! to horse! the sabres gleam;
High sounds our bugle call;
Combined by honour’s sacred tie,
Our word is Laws and Liberty!
March forward, one and all!
Sir Walter Scott.
LEYDEN
CXLI
ODE ON VISITING FLODDEN
Green Flodden! on thy bloodstained head
Descend no rain or vernal dew;
But still, thou charnel of the dead,
May whitening bones thy surface strew!
Soon as I tread thy rush-clad vale,
Wild fancy feels the clasping mail;
The rancour of a thousand years
Glows in my breast; again I burn
To see the banner’d pomp of war return,
And mark, beneath the moon, the silver light of spears.
Lo! bursting from their common tomb,
The spirits of the ancient dead
Dimly streak the parted gloom
With awful faces, ghastly red;
As once, around their martial king,
They closed the death-devoted ring,
With dauntless hearts, unknown to yield;
In slow procession round the pile
Of heaving corses, moves each shadowy file,
And chants, in solemn strain, the dirge of Flodden Field.