The Poetical Works of Walter C. Smith :: :: University of Virginia Library

Ah! woe for the Lamb's dear Bride!
And woe for this covenant-land!
Compassed on every side
With hate and treason and pride,
And feeble in heart and hand;
The Lord will His wrath command
On a faithless land and Bride.

2

Dark is the day; but worse
The night that is drawing near,
With Death on his pale white horse,
And the dead lying hid in the gorse,
And floating in river and mere,
While the streets of the city appear
Red with the blood of the corse.

3

I see the lean dogs creeping
To their feast in the lone dark street;
I see the foul birds leaping
To the house where a child is sleeping
On a mother's bosom sweet—
But her heart hath ceased to beat;
And the foul birds are croaking and leaping.

4

And we've not seen the worst of it yet;
And I wot not whether I may,
Though I sought the Lord, when we met
Near the black Moffat water, to get
Just a blink of light on my way,
And to know if I should play
The man, in the worse times yet.

5

But he said, “Content ye now,
You shall be where I think best”:
“Yea, Lord,” quoth I, “but Thou
Knowest I never did bow
To Baal with the rest,
Nor took the black, false test”:
But he said, “Content ye now.”

6

I was sitting alone on the hill
By a thunder-blasted tree,
Where a corby had gorged his fill
Of a lamb that was lying ill;
And in the red light he
Stood winking drowsily,
With the blood and fat on his bill.

7

The gray, cold mist was creeping
At gloaming over the hill,
The whaup in the stank was sleeping,
And the lonesome heron keeping
Its watch where the pool was still,
And slow and gray and chill
The gloaming mist was creeping.

8

Then I saw, as plain as eye
Could see, the veil uplift,
And the dark years sweeping by
In terror and misery—
Dark years, with never a rift
In the cloud of blackness, swift
Went sweeping gloomily by.

9

Airds Moss was nought but a ploy,
And the Pentlands only a jest,
And Bothwell Brig was a toy,
And the Highland raid a joy;
For East shall cry to West,
And the dead shall seem to be blest,
And all the past but a ploy.

10

I saw the trooper ride,
With the blood on his bridle hand,
Down by the Solway tide,
And over the banks of Clyde;
I saw o'er all the land
The gruesome gibbet stand,
And the godless trooper ride.

11

Silent the song of labour;
And the clap of the mill was dumb;
Hushed were the pipe and the tabor;
And only the clash of the sabre
Rang to the fife and the drum,
As the red troopers come,
Trampling the fields of our labour.

12

The maid with her milking pail
Wept at the empty byre;
Dazed and eerie and pale,
The husbandman with his flail,
Stood by the smouldering pyre,
As the wild red sparks of fire
Blazed up in the rising gale.

13

Wailing down in the glen,
Weeping up on the hill,
A cry from the cities of men,
And the cleft of the rock and the den;
For the dead lay unburied, until
The time and half time fulfil
The word of the Lord of men.

14

There was none to woo or to wed,
There was none to speak of cheer,
There was none to lift up the head,
As the land sat down with its dead—
Sat down in the dust with fear,
While the Baal-priests drew near,
And mocked at the bowed-down head.

15

Labour, and pleasure, and faith,
All of them were forgot,
And men held in their breath
At the ghastly riot of death;
For terror did quite besot
Even them who had wrestled and fought
Hitherto in the hope of the faith.

16

I saw it all, and I think
The Lord hath shown to me
Sometimes, a wonderful blink
Of things beyond the brink
Of the dark futurity,—
Even more than I want to see;
But it's all for your good, I think.

17

You call me a prophet, and
Maybe I am, indeed,
All the prophet a land
That hath broken its covenant band,
Either shall get or need—
And yet but a shaking reed
In a dreary desert land.

18

Sometimes I'm tempted sore
To say, Lord, let me be
As blind as others or more;
And sometimes I've thought, before,
It was but guessing in me,
And nothing of prophecy,—
Shrewd guessing, and nothing more.

19

So the Tempter will sift me like wheat,
Till I say to him, Get thee behind!
Or trample him under my feet:—
And bless me not when you meet,
For it's not all blessing, I find;
Yea, I had liefer be blind,
When Satan will sift me like wheat.

20

And guess or grace, I am sure
There are dark days near at hand
For the Lord's afflicted poor
And the Lamb's bride to endure,
In a waste and weary land,
From gaol and gibbet and brand,
And the trooper's vengeance sure.

21

For if God ever spoke to me,
It was just that night on the hill,
As I sat by the blasted tree,
And the gray mists eerily
Crept, ghostly and slow and chill,
And the corby gorged his fill,
As the word was given to me.