Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

Farewell the greenwood, and the welkin song!
Farewell the harmless bill!—The o'erfolding beak,
Incurvated: the clutching pounce; the eye,
Ferocious, keen, full-orbed; the attitude
Erect; the skimming flight; the hovering poise;
The rapid sousing stroke;—these now I sing!

How fleet the Falcon's pinion in pursuit!
Less fleet the linnet's flight!—Alas, poor bird!
Weary and weak is now thy flagging wing,
While close and closer draws the eager foe.
Now up she rises, and, with arrowed pinions,
Impetuous souses; but in vain: With turn

Sudden, the linnet shuns the deadly stroke,
Throwing her far behind; but quick again
She presses on: Down drops the feeble victim
Into the hawthorn bush, and panting sits.
The falcon, skimming round and round, espies
Her prey, and darts among the prickly twigs.
Unequal now the chace! struggling she strives,
Entangled in the thorny labyrinth,
While easily its way the small bird winds,
Regaining soon the centre of the grove.

But not alone the dwellers of the wood
Tremble beneath the falcon's fateful wing.
Oft hovering o'er the barn-yard is she seen,
In early spring, when round their ruffling dam
The feeble younglings pick the pattering hail:
And oft she plunges low, and swiftly skims
The ground; as oft the bold and threatening mien
Of chanticleer deters her from the prey.

Amid the mountain fells, or river cliffs
Abrupt, the falcon's eyry, perched on high,
Defies access: broad to the sun 'tis spread,
With withered sprigs hung o'er the dizzy brink.
What dreadful cliffs o'erhang this little stream!
So loftily they tower, that he who looks
Upward, to view their almost meeting summits,

Feels sudden giddiness, and instant grasps
The nearest fragment of the channel rocks,
Resting his aching eye on some green branch
That midway down shoots from the creviced crag.
Athwart the narrow chasm fleet flies the rack,
Each cloud no sooner visible than gone;
While 'tween these natural bulwarks, that deride
The art of man, murmurs the hermit brook,
And joins, with opened banks, the full-streamed Clyde.

How various are thy aspects, noble stream!
Now gliding silently by sloping banks,
Now flowing softly with a silver sound,
Now rushing, tumbling, boiling, through the rocks.
Even on that bulging verge smooth flows thy stream,
Then spreads along a gentle ledge, then sweeps
Compressed by an abutting turn, till o'er
It pours tremendously; again it sweeps
Unpausing, till, again, with louder roar,
It mines into the boisterous wheeling gulph;
While high the boulted foam, at times, displays
An Iris arch, thrown light from rock to rock;
And oft the swallow through the misty cloud
Flits fearlessly, and drinks upon the wing.
O, what an amphitheatre surrounds
The abyss, in which the downward mass is plunged,
Stunning the ear! High as the falcon's flight,

The rocks precipitous ascend, and bound
The scene magnificent; deep, deep below,
The snowy surge spreads to a dark expanse.

These are the rocks on which the youthful eye
Of Wallace gazed, the music this he loved.
Oft has he stood upon the trembling brink,
Unstayed by tree or twig, absorbed in thought;
There would he trace, with eager eye, the oak,
Uprooted from its bank by ice-fraught floods,
And floating o'er the dreadful cataract:
There would he moralize upon its fate;—
It re-appears with scarce a broken bough,
It re-appears,—Scotland may yet be free!

High rides the moon amid the fleecy clouds,
That glisten, as they float athwart her disk;
Sweet is the glimpse that, for a moment, plays
Among these mouldering pinnacles:—but, hark!
That dismal cry! It is the wailing owl.
Night long she mourns, perched on some vacant niche,
Or time-rent crevice: Sometimes to the woods
She bends her silent, slowly moving wing,
And on some leafless tree, dead of old age,
Sits watching for her prey; but should the foot
Of man intrude into her solemn shades,
Startled, he hears the fragile, breaking branch

Crash as she rises:—farther in the gloom,
To deeper solitudes she wings her way.

Oft in the hurly of the wintry storm,
Housed in some rocking steeple, she augments
The horror of the night; or when the winds
Exhausted pause, she listens to the sound
Of the slow-swinging pendulum, till loud
Again the blast is up, while lightning-gleams
Shoot 'thwart, and ring a fearful, deadly toll.

On ancient oak, or elm, whose topmast boughs
Begin to fail, the raven's twig-formed house
Is built; and, many a year, the self same tree
The aged solitary pair frequent.
But distant is their range; for oft at morn
They take their flight, and not till twilight grey
Their slow returning cry hoarse meets the ear.

Well does the raven love the sound of war.—
Amid those plains, where Danube darkly rolls,
The theatres, on which the kingly play
Of war is oftenest acted, there the peal
Of cannon-mouths summons the sable flocks
To wait their death-doomed prey; and they do wait:
Yes, when the glittering columns, front to front
Drawn out, approach in deep and awful silence,

The raven's voice is heard hovering between.
Sometimes upon the far-deserted tents
She boding sits, and sings her fateful song.
But in the abandoned field she most delights,
When o'er the dead and dying slants the beam
Of peaceful morn, and wreaths of reeking mist
Rise from the gore-dewed sward: from corpse to corpse
She revels, far and wide; then, sated, flies
To some shot-shivered branch, whereon she cleans
Her purpled beak; and down she lights again,
To end her horrid meal: another, keen,
Plunges her beak deep in yon horse's side,
Till, by the hungry hound displaced, she flits
Once more to human prey.

Ah, who is he
At whose heart-welling wound she drinks,
Glutting her thirst! He was a lovely youth;
Fair Scotia was his home, until his sire
To swollen Monopoly resigned, heart-wrung,
The small demesne which his forefathers plowed:
Wide then dispersed the family of love.
One son betook him to the all-friendly main;
Another, with his aged parents, plied
The sickly trade, in city garret pent;
Their youngest born, the drum and martial show,—
Deluded half, and half despairing,—joined;
And soon he lay the food of bird and beast.

Long is his fate unknown; the horrid sum
Of dead is named, but boding fear is left,
Enlabyrinthed in doubt, to please itself
With dark, misgiving hope. Ah, one there is,
Who fosters long the languid hope, that still
He may return: The live-long summer day
She at the house-end sits; and oft her wheel
Is stopt, while on the road, far-stretched, she bends
A melancholy, eye-o'erflowing look;
Or strives to mould the distant traveller
Into the form of him who's far away.
Hopeless, and broken-hearted, still she loves
To sing, When wild war's deadly blast was blawn.

Alas! War riots with increasing rage.
Behold that field bestrewn with bleaching bones;
And, mark! the raven in the horse's ribs,
Gathering, engaged, the gleanings of a harvest
Almost forgotten now: Rejoice, ye birds of prey!
No longer shall ye glean your scanty meals;
Upon that field again long prostrate wreaths,
Death-mown, shall lie: I see the gory mound
Of dead, and wounded, piled, with here and there
A living hand, clutching in vain for help.

But what the horrors of the field of war,
To those, the sequel of the foiled attempt
Of fettered vengeance struggling to be free!—
Inhuman sons of Europe! not content
With dooms of death, your victim high ye hung
Encaged, to scorch beneath the torrid ray,
And feed, alive, the hungry fowls of heaven.
Around the bars already, see, they cling!
The vulture's head looks through; she strives in vain
To force her way: The lesser birds await
Till worn-out nature sinks; then on they pounce,
And tear the quivering flesh: in agony
The victim wakes, and rolls his wretched eyes,
And feebly drives the ravening flocks away.
Most dreadfully he groans: 'tis thirst, thirst, thirst,
Direst of human torments!—down again
He sinks;—again he feels the torturing beak.

England, such things have been, and still would be,
But that the generous band, the stedfast friends
Of Afric's sons, stand ready to avenge
Their wrongs, and chain the tyrant arm.

One of that band of brothers is no more:
The voice of freedom's firmest friend is mute.
O what a spirit heavenward has forsook
This darkened orb! In him was meekly blent

Intelligence all but intuitive,
With infantine simplicity of soul;—
But vain is language to pourtray that mind,
That system, comprehensive, yet exact,—
As vain as man's poor efforts to describe,
By mimic spheres with gilded satellites,
The march stupendous of the starry host.
His eloquence!
There too all language, but his own, would fail;
For who from glimmering sparks that crackling gleam
From art's electric ordnance, could conceive
The thunder's voice, that awes the world to silence;
The vivid flash that passes like a thought
From heaven to earth, or thwart the welkin's cope,
The hemisphere illuming with its blaze!
But these are not remembrances that glad
Thy gentle soul: No; 'mid celestial joys
Not one to thee bliss more congenial brings,
Than memory of thy stedfastness long tried,
Immoveable, unwearied in the cause
Of Afric's sons by freemens' hands enslaved,
Than does the hope, now almost realized,
That on the blood-stained coast where murder's flag
Streamed more terrific than the lion's mane,
The father shall lay down his head in peace
Among his infants on their leafy couch,
Nor wake from dreams of horror that he hears

The white man's voice dooming him to be torn
From children, wife, from father, brother, friend,
Or, more disastrous still! that all most dear
To his wrung heart his destiny must share.

Yet not to thee, spirit benign! is due
The highest praise, for Africa restored
To human rights: There is a man, endowed
With eloquence, sublime as was the cause,
With fortitude undaunted by defeat,
With confidence derived from trust in heaven,
Who moved, inspired the combination grand
Of virtues, talents, ranged on mercy's side,
Who shuns applause, whose actions are his name.

On distant waves, the raven of the sea,
The cormorant, devours her carrion food.
Along the blood-stained coast of Senegal,
Prowling, she scents the cassia-perfumed breeze
Tainted with death, and, keener, forward flies:
The towering sails, that waft the house of woe,
Afar she views: upon the heavy hulk,
Deep-logged with wretchedness, full fast she gains:
(Revolting sight! the flag of freedom waves
Above the stern-emblazoned words, that tell
The amount of crimes which Britain's boasted laws,
Within the narrow wooden walls, permit!)

And now she nighs the carnage-freighted keel,
Unscared by rattling fetters, or the shriek
Of mothers, o'er their ocean-buried babes.
Lured by the scent, unweariedly she flies,
And at the foamy dimples of the track
Darts sportively, or perches on a corpse.

From scenes like these, O, Scotland, once again
To thee my weary fancy fondly hies,
And, with the eagle, mountain-perched, alights.
Amid Lochaber's wilds, or dark Glencoe,
High up the pillared mountain's steepest side,
The eagle, from her eyry on the crag
Of over-jutting rock, beholds afar.
Viewing the distant flocks, with ranging eye
She meditates the prey; but waits the time
When seas of mist extend along the vale,
And, rising gradual, reach her lofty shore:
Up then to sunny regions of the air
She soars, and looks upon the white-wreathed summits
Of mountains, seeming ocean isles; then down
She plunges, stretching through the hazy deep;
Unseen she flies, and, on her playful quarry,
Pounces unseen: The shepherd knows his loss,
When high o'erhead he hears a passing bleat
Faint, and more faintly, dying far away.

And now aloft she bends her homeward course,
Loaded, yet light; and soon her youngling pair,
Joyful descry her buoyant wing emerge
And float along the cloud; fluttering they stoop
Upon the dizzy brink, as if they aimed
To try the abyss, and meet her coming breast;
But soon her coming breast, and outstretched wings,
Glide shadowing down, and close upon their heads.

It was upon the eagle's plundered store
That Wallace fared, when hunted from his home,
A glorious outlaw! by the lawless power
Of freedom's foiled assassin, England's king.
Along the mountain cliffs, that ne'er were clomb
By other footstep than his own, 'twas there
His eagle-visioned genius, towering, planned
The grand emprise of setting Scotland free.
He longed to mingle in the storm of war;
And as the eagle dauntlessly ascends,
Revelling amid the elemental strife,
His mind sublimed prefigured to itself
Each circumstance of future hard-fought fields,—
The battle's hubbub loud; the forceful press,
That from his victim hurries him afar;
The impetuous close concentrated assault,
That, like a billow broken on the rocks,
Recedes, but forward heaves with doubled fury.

When low'rs the moveless, massive rack, high piled,
And silence deep foretells the thunder near,
The eagle upward penetrates the gloom,
And, far above the fire-impregnate wreaths,
The ethereal-towered volcanos soaring views;
Till, muttering low at first, begins the peal;
Then she descends,—she loves the thunder's voice,
She wheels, and sports amid the rattling clouds,
Undazzled gazes on the sheeted blaze,
Darts at the flash, or, hung in hovering poise,
Delighted hears the music of the roar.
Nor does the wintry blast, the drifting fall,
Shrouded in night, and, with a death-hand grasp,
Benumbing life, drive her to seek the roof
Of cave, or hollow cliff; firm on her perch,
Her ancient and accustomed rock, she sits,
With wing-couched head, and, to the morning light,
Appears a frost-rent fragment, coped with snow.

Yet her, invulnerable as she seems
By every change of elemental power,
The art of man, the general foe of man,
And bird, and beast, subdues; the leaden bolt,
Slung from the mimic lightning's nitrous wing,
Brings low her head; her close and mailed plumage
Avails her nought,—for higher than her perch
The clambering marksman lies, and takes his aim

Instant upon her flight, when every plume
Ruffling expands to catch the lifting gale.
She has the death; upward a little space
She springs, then plumb down drops: The victor stands,
Long listening, ere he hear the fall; at last,
The crashing branches of the unseen wood,
Far down below, send echoing up the sound,
That faintly rises to his leaning ear.
But, woe to him! if, with the mortal wound,
She still retain strength to revenge the wrong:
Her bleeding wing she veers; her maddened eye
Discerns the lurking wretch; on him she springs;
One talon clutched, with life's last struggling throes
Convulsed, is buried at his heart; the other
Deep in his tortured eyeballs is transfixed:
Pleased, she expires upon his writhing breast.

Of bulk more huge, and borne on broader vans,
The eagle of the sea from Atlas soars,
Or Teneriffe's hoar peak, and stretches far
Above the Atlantic wave, contemning distance.
The watchful helmsman from the stern descries,
And hails her course, and many an eye is raised.
Loftier she flies than hundred times mast-height:
Onward she floats, then plunges from her soar
Down to the ship, as if she aimed to perch

Upon the mainmast pinnacle; but up again
She mounts Alp high, and, with her lowered head
Suspended, eyes the bulging sails, disdains
Their tardy course, outflies the hurrying rack,
And, disappearing, mingles with the clouds.

The first line of “The Soldier's Return,” a song by Burns.