And there was mounting in hot haste:  the steed,
    The mustering squadron, and the clattering car,
    Went pouring forward with impetuous speed,
    And swiftly forming in the ranks of war;
    And the deep thunder peal on peal afar;
    And near, the beat of the alarming drum
    Roused up the soldier ere the morning star;
    While thronged the citizens with terror dumb,
  Or whispering with white lips,—­“The foe! they come! they come!”

    And wild and high the “Cameron’s gathering” rose,
    The war-note of Lochiel, which Albyn’s hills
    Have heard,—­and heard, too, have her Saxon foes: 
    How in the noon of night that pibroch thrills
    Savage and shrill!  But with the breath which fills
    Their mountain pipe, so fill the mountaineers
    With the fierce native daring which instills
    The stirring memory of a thousand years,
  And Evan’s, Donald’s fame, rings in each clansman’s ears!

    And Ardennes waves above them her green leaves,
    Dewy with nature’s tear-drops, as they pass,
    Grieving, if aught inanimate e’er grieves,
    Over the unreturning brave,—­alas! 
    Ere evening to be trodden like the grass
    Which now beneath them, but above shall grow
    In its next verdure, when this fiery mass
    Of living valor, rolling on the foe,
  And burning with high hope, shall moulder cold and low.

    Last noon beheld them full of lusty life,
    Last eve in Beauty’s circle proudly gay,
    The midnight brought the signal sound of strife,
    The morn the marshalling in arms,—­the day
    Battle’s magnificently stern array! 
    The thunder-clouds close o’er it, which when rent
    The earth is covered thick with other clay,
    Which her own clay shall cover, heaped and pent,
  Rider and horse,—­friend, foe,—­in one red burial blent!

    Their praise is hymned by loftier harps than mine;
    Yet one I would select from that proud throng,
    Partly because they blend me with his line,
    And partly that I did his sire some wrong,
    And partly that bright names will hallow song! 
    And his was of the bravest, and when showered
    The death-bolts deadliest the thinned files along,
    Even where the thickest of war’s tempest lowered,
  They reached no nobler breast than thine, young, gallant Howard!

    There have been tears and breaking hearts for thee,
    And mine were nothing, had I such to give;
    But when I stood beneath the fresh green tree,
    Which living waves where thou didst cease to live,
    And saw around me the wide field revive
    With fruits and fertile promise, and the Spring
    Come forth her work of gladness to contrive,
    With all her reckless birds upon the wing,
  I turned from all she brought to those she could not bring.