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

Where the wall its shadow cast
As the sun went redly down,
To and fro Grange and Lethington passed,
While the light upon Arthur Seat faded fast,
And on grey St. Giles's crown.

The siege drew nigh its close,
For hemmed in on every side,
Each new morning of late they rose
To a famine of bread, and a feast of blows,
And many had pined and died.

Grange was a soldier brave,
Maitland was crafty and keen;
They had tried by their wits to guide the wave,
And to ride the tide when the storm did rave,
And bring back the captive Queen.

Said Maitland, “The end draws near,
And they'll strike, and will not spare;
When we render the place, if they find us here
They will hang us over the battle-ments clear
For the corbies to pick us bare.

But I mean not to give them the chance:
Life is sweet, yet I fear not death
If it comes in due course, as the years advance,
Or by stroke of a sword, or thrust of a lance,
Or a bullet that stops your breath.

But the men of the long black robe
Have a method from which I shrink—
A running noose, and a howling mob,
And a fumbling hangman who bungles his job,
And I'd rather the old Roman drink.

To-morrow the game will be up,
On the whole we have not played it ill;
But we've lost. And what say you with me to sup
This evening, and share in a farewell cup
That will settle our share of the bill?

The food will be scant, for I think
Our rations have come to a close;
But we shall not complain of the wine that we drink,
For we still have a flask that will bubble and wink,
And mock at our well-baffled foes.

570

You will not? you don't mind the rope?
Or is it religion restrains?
And have we got rid of the old-fashioned Pope,
But to cling all the more to the fear and the hope
Which were the mainspring of his gains.

Ah well! By and by I shall know
More than Priest or Presbyter can,
Of the place up above, or the place down below,
And I'll take all the risk of it rather than show
That I cannot face death like a man.

Knox prays for you every night,
But has never a good word for me;
I am doomed, as it seems, to go down to the pit
As the one place for which I am thoroughly fit,
And where I must evermore be.

Yet I fancy that John might have dropt
A word for me, just by the way.
He must know that when some of you foolishly hoped
To blind him, or bribe him, 'twas I alone stopped
All efforts at that kind of play.

'Twas insulting him even to think
Of winning him o'er to our side,
Or getting him even for a moment to wink,
When he had, as he always had, some certain blink
Of the thing we were striving to hide.

He was just the one man in the land
We could neither corrupt nor appal,
Who clearly saw through all the plots that we planned;
And with hardly a trump card once in his hand,
He has won the great game from us all.

I grant him a head always clear,
And a will that no terrors could bend,
A heart that felt never a shrinking of fear,
And would not be moved by a smile or a tear
Of his Queen, or his lovingest friend.

And it was not his own ends he sought,
I allow him honest and true—
A dreamer of course, and a danger, but not
To mend his own fortune, or better his lot,
As we mostly were minded to do.

He is not the manner of man
To be tricked or terrified—no!
But had you adopted the one certain plan
Wise rulers have used since the world began,
He would have been dead long ago,

And we should have ruled in his stead,
And brought back the Queen to her throne,
And seen on the Tolbooth the grin of his head
Where it stuck on the spike, as I hear that he said
He hoped yet to look on my own.

But you scrupled to ransom the State
By the life he was ready to give,
Though your fine gospel rests, and its glory is great,
On the fact that a man bowed his head unto Fate
That the perishing people might live.

571

So the Queen has been driven from her throne,
And the Kirk has been robbed of its lands,
And Mitres, Madonnas, and Masses are gone,
And Knox, o'er the ruin exalted alone,
Plays Pope, and our nobles commands.

But I'll none of his orders, nor yet
The gallows he means for my throat,
So long as I know how to pay the old debt
With a fair cup of wine after supper, and get
To the end of all uncertain thought.

That supper did never take place,
For the Castle was rendered that day,
And the rebels obtained neither favour nor grace,
But were haled to the prison, and looked in the face
Of a great howling mob all the way.

Only Maitland one morning was found,
With a flask near his white finger-tips,
Lying low in his cell on the rush-covered ground,
With a sweet sickly smell hanging heavily round,
And a cynical smile on his lips.