The Poetical Works of Andrew Lang :: :: University of Virginia Library

Ah, my Prince, it were well—
Hadst thou to the gods been dear—
To have fallen where Keppoch fell,
With the war-pipe loud in thine ear!
To have died with never a stain
On the fair White Rose of renown,
To have fallen, fighting in vain,
For thy father, thy faith, and thy crown!
More than thy marble pile,
With its women weeping for thee,
Were to dream in thine ancient isle,
To the endless dirge of the sea!
But the fates deemed otherwise,
Far thou sleepest from home,
From the tears of the northern skies,
In the secular dust of Rome.

A city of death and the dead,
But thither a pilgrim came,
Wearing on weary head
The crowns of years and fame:
Little the Lucrine lake
Or Tivoli said to him,
Scarce did the memories wake
Of the far-off years and dim.

For he stood by Avernus' shore,
But he dreamed of a northern glen
And he murmured, over and o'er,
‘For Charlie and his men’:
And his feet, to death that went,
Crept forth to St. Peter's shrine,
And the latest minstrel bent
O'er the last of the Stuart line.

The ‘pilgrim’ was, of course, Sir Walter Scott.