4
Triumphant in
its pain:—
Then the old days of Holyrood halls
return’d
The leaden lethargy from his soul
he spurn’d,
And was the Prince
again:—
All Scotland waking in him; all
her bold
Chieftains and clans:—and all their tale,
and his, he told:
5
—Told how, o’er
the boisterous seas
From faithless France he danced his way
Where Alban’s thousand islands lay,
The kelp-strown ridge of the lone Hebrides:—
How down each strath they stream’d as springtide
rills,
When he to Finnan vale
Came from Glenaladale,
And that snow-handful grew an avalanche of the hills.
6
There Lochiel, Glengarry there,
Macdonald, Cameron: souls untried
In war, but stout in mountain-pride
All odds against all worlds to laugh and dare:
Unpurchaseable faith of chief and clan!
Enough! Their Prince has thrown
Himself upon his own!
By hearts not heads they count, and manhood measures
man!
7
—Torrent from Lochaber
sprung,
Through Badenoch bare and Athole turn’d,
The fettering Forth o’erpast and spurn’d,
Then on the smiling South in fury flung;
Now gather head with all thine affluent force,
Draw forth the wild mellay!
At Gladsmuir is the fray;
Scotland ’gainst England match’d:
White Rose against White Horse!
8
Cluster’d down the slope
they go,
Red clumps of ragged valour, down,
While morn-mists yet the hill-top crown:—
Clan Colla! on!—the Camerons touch the
foe!
One touch!—the battle breaks, the fight
is fought,
As summit-boulders glide
Riddling the forest-side,
And in one moment’s crash an army melts to nought!
9
—Ah gay nights
of Holyrood!
Star-eyes of Scotland’s fairest fair,
Sun-glintings of the golden hair,
Life’s tide at full in that brief interlude!
Then as a bark slips from her natural coast
Deep into seas unknown,
Scotland went forth alone,
Unfriended, unallied; a handful ’gainst a host.
10
By the Bolder moorlands bare,
By faithless Solway’s glistening sands,
And where Caer Luel’s dungeon stands,
Huge keep of ancient Urien, huge, foursquare:—
Preston, and loyal Lancashire; . . . and then
From central Derby down,
To strike the royal town,
And to his German realm the usurper thrust again!
11
—O the lithesome
mountaineers,
Wild hearts with kingly boyhood high,
And victory in each forward eye,
While stainless honour his white banner rears!
Then all the air with mountain-music thrill’d,
The bonnets o’er the brow,—
My gallant clans! . . . and now
The voices closed in earth, in death the pibroch still’d!
12
—As beneath Ben
Aille’s crest
The west wind weaves its roof of gray,
And all the glory of the day
Blooms off from loch and copse and green hill-breast;
So, when that craven council spoke retreat,
The fateful shameful word
They heard,—and scarcely heard!
At Scotland’s name how should the blood refuse
to beat?