More years passed on. Ho! near by the cove
Is a ship with a pirate crew,
All bound in honour and fear and love,
To their captain, Hector Drew;
Who looked through his glass at old Kildearn,
As thoughts through his memory ran,
And fain of that house he would something learn.
But he is an outlawed man.
Nor venture could he to come upon land,
Except under cloud of night,
And he and all his pirate band
Lie hidden there out of sight;
That he might plunder Kildearn House
Of its gold and its jewelrie,
Then away, and away, again to cruise
Where rovers aye love to be.
But there is one who stands on the shore,
Who knew that pirate hoy,
Whose captain she bribed many years before
To steal away Kildearn's boy.
She has sent the bloodhounds to the wood,
They have seized them every loon,
And sent them to answer for deeds of blood,
To Edwin's old castled toun.
The Admiral High of old Scotland
Has them tried for deeds so dark,
And they are decreed by his high command
To be hanged within high-water mark.
On the sands of Leith, as St. Giles struck two,
And within the hem of the sea,
There Captain Drew and all his crew
Were hanged for piracie.
And so it is true that a woman's wile
A man may with safety slight,
At worst it may be but nature's guile
To procure what is nature's right.
But a woman's wrath, if once inflamed
By a sense of fond love betrayed,
No cunning device by cunning framed
Has ever that passion laid.
THE BALLAD OF AGE AND YOUTH.
I left yon stately castle on the height,
The ancient halls of lordly Ravenslee,
Wherein was met, in grandeur all bedight,
Of knights and dames a gallant companie;
For I was in a misanthropic mood,
And deemed that gay galaverie false and vain,
And wished to lie or loiter in some wood,
And give my fancy her unbridled rein.
I left them all in flush of pleasure's sport,
Some knights with damoiselles gone forth to woo,
Some listing gleemen in the ballion court,
Some deep in ombre, some at lanterloo,
Some gone a-hawking with the merlyon,
Some at their noon-meat sipping Spanish wine,
Some conning old romances on the lawn,
And all to meet in hall at hour of dine.
II.
Down in Dalmossie dell I sought a nook
Beneath a thick and widely-spreading tree,
And there I sat to con my little book,
My book of old black-letter grammarie.
All stillness in that deep and lonely dell
Save hum of bumble-bee on nimble wing,
Or zephyr sporting round the wild blue bell,
While fancy feigned some tiny tinkle-ring.