—Lochiel, Lochiel! beware of the day;
For, dark and despairing, my sight I may seal,
But man cannot cover what God would reveal;
'Tis the sunset of life gives me mystical lore,
And coming events cast their shadows before.
I tell thee, Culloden's dread echoes shall ring
With the bloodhounds that bark for thy fugitive king.
Lo! anointed by Heaven with the vials of wrath,
Behold where he flies on his desolate path!
Now in darkness and billows, he sweeps from my sight:
Rise, rise! ye wild tempests, and cover his flight!
'Tis finished. Their thunders are hushed on the moors:
Culloden is lost, and my country deplores.
But where is the ironbound prisoner? Where?
For the red eye of battle is shut in despair.
Say, mounts he the ocean wave, banished, forlorn,
Like a limb from his country cast bleeding and torn?
Ah no! for a darker departure is near;
The war drum is muffled, and black is the bier;
His death bell is tolling: oh! mercy, dispel
Yon sight, that it freezes my spirit to tell!
Life flutters convulsed in his quivering limbs,
And his blood-streaming nostril in agony swims.
Accursed be the fagots, that blaze at his feet,
Where his heart shall be thrown, ere it ceases to beat,
With the smoke of its ashes to poison the gale—
LOCHIEL.
—Down, soothless insulter! I trust not the tale:
For never shall Albin a destiny meet,
So black with dishonor, so foul with retreat.
Tho' my perishing ranks should be strewed in their gore,
Like ocean weeds heaped on the surf-beaten shore,
Lochiel, untainted by flight or by chains,
While the kindling of life in his bosom remains,
Shall victor exult, or in death be laid low,
With his back to the field, and his feet to the foe!
And leaving in battle no blot on his name,
Look proudly to Heaven from the deathbed of fame.
Thomas Campbell.
"Announced by all the trumpets of the sky"