The complete poetical works of Thomas Campbell Oxford edition: Edited, with notes by J. Logie Robertson |
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| POEMS
HISTORICAL AND LEGENDARY |
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 | The complete poetical works of Thomas Campbell |  |
POEMS HISTORICAL AND LEGENDARY
O'CONNOR'S CHILD
OR, ‘THE FLOWER OF LOVE-LIES-BLEEDING’
I
Oh! once the harp of InnisfailWas strung full high to notes of gladness;
But yet it often told a tale
Of more prevailing sadness.
Sad was the note, and wild its fall,
As winds that moan at night forlorn
Along the isles of Fion-Gall,
When, for O'Connor's child to mourn,
The harper told, how lone, how far
From any mansion's twinkling star,
From any path of social men,
Or voice, but from the fox's den,
The lady in the desert dwelt;
And yet no wrongs, no fear she felt.
Say, why should dwell in place so wild,
O'Connor's pale and lovely child?
II
Sweet lady! she no more inspiresGreen Erin's hearts with beauty's power,
As in the palace of her sires
She bloomed a peerless flower.
Gone from her hand and bosom, gone,
The royal brooch, the jewelled ring,
That o'er her dazzling whiteness shone
Like dews on lilies of the spring.
Yet why, though fallen her brothers' kerne,
Beneath De Bourgo's battle stern,
While yet in Leinster unexplored,
Her friends survive the English sword;
Why lingers she from Erin's host,
So far on Galway's shipwrecked coast;
Why wanders she a huntress wild—
O'Connor's pale and lovely child?
III
And, fixed on empty space, why burnHer eyes with momentary wildness?
And wherefore do they then return
To more than woman's mildness?
Dishevelled are her raven locks;
On Connocht Moran's name she calls;
And oft amidst the lonely rocks
She sings sweet madrigals.
Placed in the foxglove and the moss
Behold a parted warrior's cross!
That is the spot, where evermore,
The lady, at her shieling door,
Enjoys that, in communion sweet,
The living and the dead can meet:
For, lo! to love-lorn fantasy,
The hero of her heart is nigh
IV
Bright as the bow that spans the storm,In Erin's yellow vesture clad,
Yellow, dyed from saffron, was the favourite colour of the ancient Irish. When the Irish chieftains came to make terms with Queen Elizabeth's lord-lieutenant, we are told by Sir John Davis that they came to court in saffroncoloured uniforms.
Morat. A drink made of the juice of mulberry mixed with honey.
A son of light—a lovely form,
He comes and makes her glad;
Now on the grass-green turf he sits,
His tasselled horn beside him laid;
Now o'er the hills in chase he flits,
The hunter and the deer a shade!
Sweet mourner! those are shadows vain
That cross the twilight of her brain;
Yet she will tell you she is blest,
Of Connocht Moran's tomb possessed,
More richly than in Aghrim's bower,
When bards high praised her beauty's power,
And kneeling pages offered up
The morat in a golden cup.
V
‘A hero's bride! this desert bower,It ill befits thy gentle breeding:
And wherefore dost thou love this flower
To call—“my love-lies-bleeding?”’
‘This purple flower my tears have nursed;
A hero's blood supplied its bloom:
I love it, for it was the first
That grew on Connocht Moran's tomb.
Oh! hearken, stranger, to my voice!
This desert mansion is my choice:
And blest, though fatal, be the star
That led me to the wilds afar:
For here these pathless mountains free
Gave shelter to my love and me;
And every rock and every stone
Bear witness that he was my own.
VI
‘O'Connor's child, I was the budOf Erin's royal tree of glory;
But woe to them that wrapt in blood
The tissue of my story!
Still as I clasp my burning brain
A death-scene rushes on my sight;
It rises o'er and o'er again,—
The bloody feud, the fatal night,
When, chafing Connocht Moran's scorn,
They called my hero basely born,
And bade him choose a meaner bride
Than from O'Connor's house of pride.
Their tribe, they said, their high degree,
Was sung in Tara's psaltery;
The pride of the Irish in ancestry was so great, that, one of the O'Neals being told that Barrett of Castlemone had been there only 400 years, he replied that he hated the clown as if he had come there but yesterday.
Tara was the place of assemblage and feasting of the petty princes of Ireland. Very splendid and fabulous descriptions are given by the Irish historians of the pomp and luxury of those meetings. The psaltery of Tara was the grand national register of Ireland. The grand epoch of political eminence in the early history of the Irish is the reign of their great and favourite monarch Ollam Fodlah, who reigned, according to Keating, about 950 years before the Christian era. Under him was instituted the great Fes at Tara, which it is pretended was a triennial convention of the states, or a parliament, the members of which were the Druids and other learned men who represented the people in that assembly, Very minute accounts are given by Irish annalists of the magnificence and order of these entertainments; from which, if credible, we might collect the earliest traces of heraldry that occur in history. To preserve order and regularity in the great number and variety of the members who met on such occasions, the Irish historians inform us that, when the banquet was ready to be served up, the shield-bearers of the princes and other members of the convention delivered in their shields and targets, which were readily distinguished by the coats of arms emblazoned upon them. These were arranged by the grand marshal and principal herald, and hung upon the walls on the right side of the table; and, upon entering the apartments, each member took his seat under his respective shield or target without the slightest disturbance. The concluding days of the meeting, it is allowed by the Irish antiquaries, were spent in very free excess of conviviality; but the first six, they say, were devoted to the examination and settlement of the annals of the kingdom. These were publicly rehearsed. When they had passed the approbation of the assembly they were transcribed into the authentic chronicles of the nation, which was called the Register, or Psalter of Tara.
Colonel Vallancy gives a translation of an old Irish fragment, found in Trinity College, Dublin, in which the palace of the above assembly is thus described as it existed in the reign of Cormac:—
‘In the reign of Cormac the palace of Tara was nine hundred feet square; the diameter of the surrounding rath seven dice or casts of a dart; it contained one hundred and fifty apartments; one hundred and fifty dormitories, or sleeping-rooms for guards, and sixty men in each; the height was twenty-seven cubits; there were one hundred and fifty common drinking-horns, twelve doors, and one thousand guests daily, besides princes, orators, and men of science, engravers of gold and silver, carvers, modellers, and nobles.’ The Irish description of the banqueting-hall is thus translated: ‘Twelve stalls or divisions in each wing; sixteen attendants on each side, and two to each table; one hundred guests in all.’
Witness their Eath's victorious brand
And Cathal of the bloody hand;
Glory (they said) and power and honour
Were in the mansion of O'Connor:
But he, my loved one, bore in field
A meaner crest upon his shield.
VII
‘Ah, brothers! what did it availThat fiercely and triumphantly
Ye fought the English of the pale
And stemmed De Bourgo's chivalry?
The house of O'Connor had a right to boast of their victories over the English. It was a chief of the O'Connor race who gave a check to the English champion De Courcy, so famous for his personal strength, and for cleaving a helmet at one blow of his sword, in the presence of the kings of France and England, when the French champion declined the combat with him. Though ultimately conquered by the English under De Bourgo, the O'Connors had also humbled the pride of that name on a memorable occasion: viz. when Walter de Bourgo, an ancestor of that De Bourgo who won the battle of Athunree, had become so insolent as to make excessive demands upon the territories of Connaught, and to bid defiance to all the rights and properties reserved by the Irish chiefs, Aeth O'Connnor, a near descendant of the famous Cathal, surnamed of the bloody hand, rose against the usurper, and defeated the English so severely that their general died of chagrin after the battle.
And what was it to love and me
That barons by your standard rode?
Or beal-fires for your jubilee
The month of May is to this day called ‘Mi Beal tiennie,’ i.e. the month of Beal's fire, in the original language of Ireland, and hence, I believe, the name of the Beltan festival in the Highlands. These fires were lighted on the summits of mountains (the Irish antiquaries say) in honour of the sun; and are supposed, by those conjecturing gentlemen, to prove the origin of the Irish from some nation who worshipped Baal or Belus. Many hills in Ireland still retain the name of ‘Cnoc Greine,’ i.e. the hill of the sun; and on all are to be seen the ruins of druidical altars.
Upon a hundred mountains glowed?
From Shannon to the North Sea foam?
Though ye your iron hands of pride
Could break the knot that love had tied?
No:—let the eagle change his plume,
The leaf its hue, the flower its bloom;
But ties around this heart were spun
That could not, would not, be undone!
VIII
‘At bleating of the wild watch-foldThus sang my love—“Oh, come with me:
Our bark is on the lake, behold
Our steeds are fastened to the tree.
Come far from Castle Connor's clans;
Come with thy belted forestere,
And I, beside the lake of swans,
Shall hunt for thee the fallow-deer;
And build thy hut, and bring thee home
The wild-fowl and the honeycomb;
And berries from the wood provide,
And play my clarshech by thy side.
The clarshech, or harp, the principal musical instrument of the Hibernian bards, does not appear to be of Irish origin, nor indigenous to any of the British islands. The Britons undoubtedly were not acquainted with it during the residence of the Romans in their country, as on all their coins on which musical instruments are represented we see only the Roman lyre, and not the British teylin, or harp.
Then come, my love!”—How could I stay?
Our nimble staghounds tracked the way,
And I pursued, by moonless skies,
The light of Connocht Moran's eyes.
IX
‘And fast and far, before the starOf dayspring, rushed we through the glade,
And saw at dawn the lofty bawn
‘Bawn,’ from the Teutonic ‘bawen’—to construct and secure with branches of trees—was so called because the primitive Celtic fortification was made by digging a ditch, throwing up a rampart, and on the latter fixing stakes, which were interlaced with boughs of trees. This word is used by Spenser; but it is inaccurately called by Mr. Todd, his annotator, an eminence.
Of Castle Connor fade.
Of this unploughed, untrodden shore;
Like birds all joyous from the cage,
For man's neglect we loved it more.
And well he knew, my huntsman dear,
To search the game with hawk and spear;
While I, his evening food to dress,
Would sing to him in happiness.
But oh that midnight of despair
When I was doomed to rend my hair!
The night to me of shrieking sorrow!
The night to him that had no morrow!
X
‘When all was hushed, at eventide,I heard the baying of their beagle:
“Be hushed!” my Connocht Moran cried,
“'Tis but the screaming of the eagle.”
Alas! 'twas not the eyrie's sound;
Their bloody bands had tracked us out.
Up-listening starts our couchant hound,
And, hark! again, that nearer shout
Brings faster on the murderers.
Spare—spare him! Brazil! Desmond fierce!
In vain! no voice the adder charms;
Their weapons crossed my sheltering arms:
Another's sword has laid him low—
Another's and another's;
And every hand that dealt the blow—
Ay me! it was a brother's!
Yes, when his moanings died away
Their iron hands had dug the clay,
And o'er his burial turf they trod,
And I beheld—oh God! oh God!
His life-blood oozing from the sod!
XI
‘Warm in his death-wounds sepulchred,Alas! my warrior's spirit brave
Nor mass nor ulla-lulla heard,
Lamenting, soothe his grave.
Dragged to their hated mansion back
How long in thraldom's grasp I lay
I knew not, for my soul was black,
And knew no change of night or day.
One night of horror round me grew;
Or if I saw, or felt, or knew,
'Twas but when those grim visages,
The angry brothers of my race,
Glared on each eye-ball's aching throb,
And checked my bosom's power to sob;
Or when my heart with pulses drear
Beat like a death-watch to my ear.
XII
‘But Heaven, at last, my soul's eclipseDid with a vision bright inspire:
I woke, and felt upon my lips
A prophetess's fire.
Thrice in the east a war-drum beat,
I heard the Saxon's trumpet sound,
And ranged, as to the judgement-seat,
My guilty, trembling brothers round.
Clad in the helm and shield they came;
For now De Bourgo's sword and flame
Had ravaged Ulster's boundaries,
And lighted up the midnight skies.
The standard of O'Connor's sway
Was in the turret where I lay;
That standard with so dire a look,
As ghastly shone the moon and pale,
I gave that every bosom shook
Beneath its iron mail.
XIII
‘“And go!” I cried, “the combat seek,Ye hearts that unappallèd bore
The anguish of a sister's shriek,—
Go! and return no more!
For sooner guilt the ordeal brand
Shall grasp unhurt, than ye shall hold
The banner with victorious hand,
Beneath a sister's curse unrolled.”—
O stranger! by my country's loss!
And by my love! and by the Cross!
I swear I never could have spoke
The curse that severed nature's yoke,
But that a spirit o'er me stood
And fired me with the wrathful mood,
And frenzy to my heart was given
To speak the malison of heaven.
If the wrath which I have ascribed to the heroine of this little piece should seem to exhibit her character as too unnaturally stripped of patriotic and domestic affections, I must beg leave to plead the authority of Corneille in the representation of a similar passion: I allude to the denunciation of Camilla in the tragedy of Horace. When Horace accompanied by a soldier bearing the three swords of the Curiatii meets his sister, and invites her to congratulate him on his victory, she expresses only her grief, which he attributes at first only to her feelings for the loss of her two brothers; but when she bursts forth into reproaches against him as the murderer of her lover, the last of the Curiatii, he exclaims—
Crois-tu donc que je sois insensible à l'outrage,
Que je souffre en mon sang ce mortel déshonneur!
Aime, aime cette mort qui fait notre bonheur.
Et préfère du moins au souvenir d'un homme
Ce qui doit ta naissance aux intérêts de Rome.’
At the mention of Rome Camille breaks out into this apostrophe:— ‘Rome, l'unique objet de mon ressentiment!
Rome, à qui vient ton bras d'immoler mon amant!
Rome, qui t'a vu naître et que ton cœur adore!
Rome, enfin, que je haïs, parce qu'elle t'honore!
Puissent tous ses voisins, ensemble conjurés,
Sapper ses fondements encore mal assurés;
Et, si ce n'est assez de toute l'Italie,
Que l'Orient, contre elle, à l'Occident s'allie!
Que cent peuples unis, des bouts de l'univers
Passent, pour la détruire, et les monts et les mers;
Qu'elle-même sur soi renverse ses murailles,
Et de ses propres mains déchire ses entrailles;
Que le courroux du Ciel, allumé par mes vœux,
Fasse pleuvoir sur elle un déluge de feux!
Voir ses maisons en cendre, et tes lauriers en poudre;
Voir le dernier Romain à son dernier soupir,
Moi seule en être cause, et mourir de plaisir!’
XIV
‘They would have crossed themselves, all mute;They would have prayed to burst the spell;
But at the stamping of my foot
Each hand down powerless fell!
“And go to Athunree!” I cried;
If the wrath which I have ascribed to the heroine of this little piece should seem to exhibit her character as too unnaturally stripped of patriotic and domestic affections, I must beg leave to plead the authority of Corneille in the representation of a similar passion: I allude to the denunciation of Camilla in the tragedy of Horace. When Horace accompanied by a soldier bearing the three swords of the Curiatii meets his sister, and invites her to congratulate him on his victory, she expresses only her grief, which he attributes at first only to her feelings for the loss of her two brothers; but when she bursts forth into reproaches against him as the murderer of her lover, the last of the Curiatii, he exclaims—
Crois-tu donc que je sois insensible à l'outrage,
Que je souffre en mon sang ce mortel déshonneur!
Aime, aime cette mort qui fait notre bonheur.
Et préfère du moins au souvenir d'un homme
Ce qui doit ta naissance aux intérêts de Rome.’
At the mention of Rome Camille breaks out into this apostrophe:— ‘Rome, l'unique objet de mon ressentiment!
Rome, à qui vient ton bras d'immoler mon amant!
Rome, qui t'a vu naître et que ton cœur adore!
Rome, enfin, que je haïs, parce qu'elle t'honore!
Puissent tous ses voisins, ensemble conjurés,
Sapper ses fondements encore mal assurés;
Et, si ce n'est assez de toute l'Italie,
Que l'Orient, contre elle, à l'Occident s'allie!
Que cent peuples unis, des bouts de l'univers
Passent, pour la détruire, et les monts et les mers;
Qu'elle-même sur soi renverse ses murailles,
Et de ses propres mains déchire ses entrailles;
Que le courroux du Ciel, allumé par mes vœux,
Fasse pleuvoir sur elle un déluge de feux!
Voir ses maisons en cendre, et tes lauriers en poudre;
Voir le dernier Romain à son dernier soupir,
Moi seule en être cause, et mourir de plaisir!’
“High lift the banner of your pride!
But know that where its sheet unrolls
The weight of blood is on your souls!
Go where the havoc of your kerne
Shall float as high as mountain fern!
Men shall no more your mansion know;
The nettles on your hearth shall grow!
Dead as the green oblivious flood
That mantles by your walls shall be
The glory of O'Connor's blood!
Away! away to Athunree!
The raven's wing shall be your pall!
And not a vassal shall unlace
The vizor from your dying face!”
XV
‘A bolt that overhung our domeSuspended till my curse was given,
Soon as it passed these lips of foam,
Pealed in the blood-red heaven.
Dire was the look that o'er their backs
The angry parting brothers threw:
But now, behold! like cataracts,
Come down the hills in view
O'Connor's plumèd partisans;
Thrice ten Kilnagorvian clans
Were marching to their doom:
A sudden storm their plumage tossed,
A flash of lightning o'er them crossed,
And all again was gloom!
XVI
‘Stranger! I fled the home of grief,At Connocht Moran's tomb to fall;
I found the helmet of my chief,
His bow still hanging on our wall,
And took it down, and vowed to rove
This desert place a huntress bold;
Nor would I change my buried love
For any heart of living mould.
No! for I am a hero's child;
I'll hunt my quarry in the wild;
And still my home this mansion make,
Of all unheeded and unheeding,
And cherish for my warrior's sake
“The flower of love-lies-bleeding.”’
REULLURA
Reullura shone like thee;
And well for her might Aodh grieve,
The dark-attired Culdee.
Line 4. The Culdees were the primitive clergy of Scotland, and apparently her only clergy from the sixth to the eleventh century. They were of Irish origin, and their monastery on the island of Iona, or Icolmkill, was the seminary of Christianity in North Britain. Presbyterian writers have wished to prove them to have been a sort of Presbyters, strangers to the Roman Church and Episcopacy. It seems to be established that they were not enemies to Episcopacy; but that they were not slavishly subjected to Rome, like the clergy of later periods, appears by their resisting the Papal ordonnances respecting the celibacy of religious men, on which account they were ultimately displaced by the Scottish sovereigns to make way for more Popish canons.
Peace to their shades! the pure Culdees
Were Albyn's earliest priests of God,
Ere yet an island of her seas
By foot of Saxon monk was trod,—
Long ere her churchmen by bigotry
Were barred from holy wedlock's tie.
'Twas then that Aodh, famed afar,
In Iona preached the word with power;
And Reullura, beauty's star,
Was the partner of his bower.
And the thistle-down waves bleaching,
And the bat flits to and fro
Where the Gael once heard thy preaching;
And fallen is each columned aisle
Where the chiefs and the people knelt.
'Twas near that temple's goodly pile
That honoured of men they dwelt.
For Aodh was wise in the sacred law,
And bright Reullura's eyes oft saw
The veil of fate uplifted.
Alas! with what visions of awe
Her soul in that hour was gifted—
With Aodh she stood alone
By the statue of an aged Saint!
Fair sculptured was the stone,
Fame said it once had graced
A Christian temple, which the Picts
In the Briton's land laid waste:
The Pictish men, by St. Columb taught,
Had hither the holy relic brought.
Reullura eyed the statue's face,
And cried, ‘It is he shall come,
Even he in this very place,
To avenge my martyrdom.
Ulvfagre is on the main,
And Iona shall look from tower and steeple
On the coming ships of the Dane;
And, dames and daughters, shall all your locks
With the spoiler's grasp entwine?
No! some shall have shelter in caves and rocks,
And the deep sea shall be mine.
Baffled by me shall the Dane return,
And here shall his torch in the temple burn
Until that holy man shall plough
The waves from Innisfail.
His sail is on the deep even now,
And swells to the southern gale.’
The holy Aodh said,
‘That the Saint whose form we stand beside
Has for ages slept with the dead?’
‘He liveth, he liveth,’ she said again,
‘For the span of his life tenfold extends
Beyond the wonted years of men.
He sits by the graves of well-loved friends
That died ere thy grandsire's grandsire's birth;
The oak is decayed with old age on earth
And his parents remember the day of dread
When the sun on the Cross looked dim
And the graves gave up their dead.
He hath roamed the earth for ages,
And hither he shall come in time
When the wrath of the heathen rages,
In time a remnant from the sword—
Ah! but a remnant—to deliver;
Yet, blessed be the name of the Lord!
His martyrs shall go into bliss for ever.
Lochlin, appalled, shall put up her steel,
And thou shalt embark on the bounding keel;
Safe shalt thou pass through her hundred ships
With the Saint and a remnant of the Gael,
And the Lord will instruct thy lips
To preach in Innisfail.’
Was burning o'er Tiriee,
And no gathering cry rose yet
O'er the isles of Albyn's sea,
Whilst Reullura saw far rowers dip
Their oars beneath the sun,
And the phantom of many a Danish ship
Where ship there yet was none.
And the shield of alarm was dumb;
Nor did their warning till midnight come,
When watch-fires burst from across the main,
From Rona and Uist and Skye,
To tell that the ships of the Dane
And the red-haired slayers were nigh.
And buckled on their arms;
But few, alas! were their numbers
To Lochlin's mailèd swarms.
And the blade of the bloody Norse
Has filled the shores of the Gael
With many a floating corse
And with many a woman's wail.
They have lighted the islands with ruin's torch,
And the holy men of Iona's church
In the temple of God lay slain—
All but Aodh, the last Culdee;
But bound with many an iron chain,
Bound in that church was he.
Rocks of the ocean flood!
Plunged she not from your heights in pride,
And mocked the men of blood?
In the temple lighted their banquet up,
And the print of their blood-red hands
Was left on the altar cup.
'Twas then that the Norseman to Aodh said,
‘Tell where thy church's treasure's laid,
Or I'll hew thee limb from limb.’
As he spoke the bell struck three,
And every torch grew dim
That lighted their revelry.
And brighter than before,
When an agèd man of majestic height
Entered the temple door.
They were struck as mute as the dead,
And their hearts were appalled by the very sound
Of his footsteps' measured tread.
Nor word was spoken by one beholder,
Whilst he flung his white robe back on his shoulder,
And, stretching his arm, as eath
Unriveted Aodh's bands
As if the gyves had been a wreath
Of willows in his hands.
To the ancient statue's form;
The Saint before his own image stood,
And grasped Ulvfagre's arm.
Then uprose the Danes at last to deliver
Their chief; and, shouting with one accord,
They drew the shaft from its rattling quiver,
They lifted the spear and sword,
And levelled their spears in rows.
But down went axes and spears and bows
When the Saint with his crosier signed;
The archer's hand on the string was stopped,
And down, like reeds laid flat by the wind,
Their lifted weapons dropped.
And, though Ulvfagre willed it not,
He came and stood at the statue's foot—
Spell-riveted to the spot
Till hands invisible shook the wall,
And the tottering image was dashed
Down from its lofty pedestal.
On Ulvfagre's helm it crashed!
Helmet, and skull, and flesh, and brain,
It crushed, as millstones crush the grain.
Of the heathen trembled round,—
And the pauses amidst his speech
Were as awful as the sound:
‘And tell the nations abroad,
How the fiercest of your herd has died
That slaughtered the flock of God.
Gather him bone by bone,
And take with you o'er the flood
The fragments of that avenging stone
That drank his heathen blood.
These are the spoils from Iona's sack,
The only spoils ye shall carry back;
For the hand that uplifteth spear or sword
Shall be withered by palsy's shock,
And I come in the name of the Lord
To deliver a remnant of his flock.’
A doleful remnant of the Gael,
And the Saint in the ship that had brought him hither
Took the mourners to Innisfail.
Unscathed they left Iona's strand
When the opal morn first flushed the sky,
For the Norse dropped spear and bow and brand,
And looked on them silently;
Safe from their hiding-places came
Orphans and mothers, child and dame:
But alas! when the search for Reullura spread,
No answering voice was given;
For the sea had gone o'er her lovely head,
And her spirit was in heaven.
LOCHIEL'S WARNING
WIZARD—LOCHIELWIZARD
Lochiel, Lochiel!
Lochiel, the chief of the warlike clan of the Camerons, and descended from ancestors distinguished in their narrow sphere for great personal prowess, was a man worthy of a better cause and fate than that in which he embarked,—the enterprise of the Stuarts in 1745. His memory is still fondly cherished among the Highlanders, by the appellation of ‘the gentle Lochiel’; for he was famed for his social virtues as much as for his martial and magnanimous (though mistaken) loyalty. His influence was so important among the Highland chiefs that it depended on his joining with his clan whether the standard of Charles should be raised or not in 1745. Lochiel was himself too wise a man to be blind to the consequences of so hopeless an enterprise, but his sensibility to the point of honour overruled his wisdom. Charles appealed to his loyalty, and he could not brook the reproaches of his Prince. When Charles landed at Borrodale Lochiel went to meet him, but on his way called at his brother's house (Cameron of Fassafern) and told him on what errand he was going—adding, however, that he meant to dissuade the Prince from his enterprise. Fassafern advised him in that case to communicate his mind by letter to Charles. ‘No,’ said Lochiel, ‘I think it my due to my Prince to give him my reasons in person for refusing to join his standard.’ ‘Brother,’ replied Fassafern, ‘I know you better than you know yourself: if the Prince once sets his eyes on you he will make you do what he pleases.’ The interview accordingly took place; and Lochiel, with many arguments, but in vain, pressed the Pretender to return to France, and reserve himself and his friends for a more favourable occasion, as he had come, by his own acknowledgement, without arms, or money, or adherents; or, at all events, to remain concealed till his friends should meet and deliberate what was best to be done. Charles, whose mind was wound up to the utmost impatience, paid no regard to this proposal, but answered ‘that he was determined to put all to the hazard.’ ‘In a few days,’ said he, ‘I will erect the royal standard, and proclaim to the people of great Britain that Charles Stuart is come over to claim the crown of his ancestors, and to win it or perish in the attempt. Lochiel, who my father has often told me was our firmest friend, may stay at home, and learn from the newspapers the fate of his Prince.’ ‘No,’ said Lochiel, ‘I will share the fate of my Prince, and so shall every man over whom nature or fortune hath given me any power.’
The other chieftains who followed Charles embraced his cause with no better hopes. It engages our sympathy most strongly in their behalf that no motive but their fear to be reproached with cowardice or disloyalty impelled them to the hopeless adventure. Of this we have an example in the interview of Prince Charles with Clanronald, another leading chieftain in the rebel army.
‘Charles,’ says Home, ‘almost reduced to despair in his discourse with Boisdale, addressed the two Highlanders with great emotion, and, summing up his arguments for taking arms, conjured them to assist their Prince, their countryman, in his utmost need. Clanronald and his friend, though well inclined to the cause, positively refused, and told him that to take up arms without concert or support was to pull down certain ruin on their own heads. Charles persisted, argued, and implored. During this conversation (they were on shipboard) the parties walked backward and forward on the deck; a Highlander stood near them, armed at all points, as was then the fashion of his country. He was a younger brother of Kinlock Moidart, and had come off to the ship to inquire for news, not knowing who was aboard. When he gathered from their discourse that the stranger was the Prince of Wales, when he heard his chief and his brother refuse to take arms with their Prince, his colour went and came, his eyes sparkled, he shifted his place, and grasped his sword. Charles observed his demeanour, and turning briskly to him called out “Will you assist me?” “I will, I will,” said Ronald: “though no other man in the Highlands should draw a sword, I am ready to die for you!” Charles, with a profusion of thanks to his champion, said he wished all the Highlanders were like him. Without farther deliberation the two Macdonalds declared that they would also join and use their utmost endeavours to engage their countrymen to take arms.’—Home's History of the Rebellion of 1745, p. 40.
When the Lowlands shall meet thee in battle array!
For a field of the dead rushes red on my sight,
And the clans of Culloden are scattered in fight.
They rally, they bleed for their kingdom and crown;
Woe, woe to the riders that trample them down!
Proud Cumberland prances, insulting the slain,
And their hoof-beaten bosoms are trod to the plain
But hark! through the fast-flashing lightning of war
What steed to the desert flies frantic and far?
Like a love-lighted watch-fire, all night at the gate.
A steed comes at morning: no rider is there;
But its bridle is red with the sign of despair.
Weep, Albin! to death and captivity led!
Oh, weep! but thy tears cannot number the dead;
For a merciless sword on Culloden shall wave,
Culloden! that reeks with the blood of the brave.
LOCHIEL
Go, preach to the coward, thou death-telling seer!
Or, if gory Culloden so dreadful appear,
Draw, dotard, around thy old wavering sight
This mantle to cover the phantoms of fright.
WIZARD
Ha! laugh'st thou, Lochiel, my vision to scorn?
Proud bird of the mountain, thy plume shall be torn!
Say, rushed the bold eagle exultingly forth
From his home in the dark-rolling clouds of the north?
Lo! the death-shot of foemen outspeeding, he rode
Companionless, bearing destruction abroad;
But down let him stoop from his havoc on high!
Ah! home let him speed,—for the spoiler is nigh!
Why flames the far summit? Why shoot to the blast
Those embers, like stars from the firmament cast?
'Tis the fire-shower of ruin, all dreadfully driven
From his eyrie, that beacons the darkness of heaven!
Oh, crested Lochiel! the peerless in might,
Whose banners arise on the battlements' height,
Heaven's fire is around thee to blast and to burn;
Return to thy dwelling! all lonely return!
And a wild mother scream o'er her famishing brood.
LOCHIEL
False Wizard, avaunt! I have marshalled my clan—
Their swords are a thousand, their bosoms are one!
They are true to the last of their blood and their breath,
And like reapers descend to the harvest of death.
Then welcome be Cumberland's steed to the shock!
Let him dash his proud foam like a wave on the rock!
But woe to his kindred, and woe to his cause,
When Albin her claymore indignantly draws!
When her bonneted chieftains to victory crowd,
Clanranald the dauntless and Moray the proud,
All plaided and plumed in their tartan array—
WIZARD
Lochiel, Lochiel! beware of the day;
For, dark and despairing, my sight I may seal,
But man cannot cover what God would reveal.
'Tis the sunset of life gives me mystical lore,
And coming events cast their shadows before.
I tell thee Culloden's dread echoes shall ring
With the bloodhounds that bark for thy fugitive king.
Lo! anointed by Heaven with the vials of wrath,
Behold where he flies on his desolate path!
The lines allude to the many hardships of the royal sufferer.
An account of the second sight, in Irish called ‘Taish,’ is thus given in Martin's Description of the Western Isles of Scotland, pp. 3-11:—
‘The second sight is a singular faculty of seeing an otherwise invisible object without any previous means used by the person who sees it for that end. The vision makes such a lively impression upon the seers that they neither see nor think of anything else except the vision as long as it continues; and then they appear pensive or jovial according to the object which was represented to them.
‘At the sight of a vision the eyelids of the person are erected, and the eyes continue staring until the object vanish. This is obvious to others who are standing by when the persons happen to see a vision; and occurred more than once to my own observation, and to others that were with me.
‘There is one in Skie, of whom his acquaintance observed that when he sees a vision the inner parts of his eyelids turn so far upwards that, after the object disappears, he must draw them down with his fingers, and sometimes employs others to draw them down, which he finds to be much the easier way.
‘This faculty of the second sight does not lineally descend in a family, as some have imagined; for I know several parents who are endowed with it, and their children are not; and vice versa. Neither is it acquired by any previous compact. And after strict inquiry I could never learn from any among them that this faculty was communicable to any whatsoever. The seer knows neither the object, time, nor place of a vision before it appears; and the same object is often seen by different persons living at a considerable distance from one another. The true way of judging as to the time and circumstances is by observation; for several persons of judgement who are without this faculty are more capable to judge of the design of a vision than a novice that is a seer. If an object appears in the day or night it will come to pass sooner or later accordingly.
‘If an object is seen early in a morning, which is not frequent, it will be accomplished in a few hours afterwards; if at noon, it will probably be accomplished that very day; if in the evening, perhaps that night; if after candles be lighted, it will be accomplished that night,—the latter always an accomplishment by weeks, months, and sometimes years, according to the time of the night the vision is seen.
‘When a shroud is seen about one it is a sure prognostic of death. The time is judged according to the height of it about the person; for if it is not seen above the middle, death is not to be expected for the space of a year, and perhaps some months longer: and as it is frequently seen to ascend higher towards the head, death is concluded to be at hand within a few days, if not hours, as daily experience confirms. Examples of this kind were shown me, when the person of whom the observations were then made was in perfect health.
‘It is ordinary with them to see houses, gardens, and trees in places void of all these, and this in process of time is wont to be accomplished; as at Mogslot, in the Isle of Skie, where there were but a few sorry low houses thatched with straw; yet in a few years the vision, which appeared often, was accomplished by the building of several good houses in the very spot represented to the seers, and by the planting of orchards there.
‘To see a spark of fire is a forerunner of a dead child, to be seen in the arms of those persons; of which there are several instances. To see a seat empty at the time of sitting in it, is a presage of that person's death quickly after it.
‘When a novice, or one that has lately obtained the second sight, sees a vision in the night-time without doors and comes near a fire he presently falls into a swoon.
‘Some find themselves as it were in a crowd of people having a corpse which they carry along with them; and after such visions the seers come in sweating, and describe the vision that appeared. If there be any of their acquaintance among them, they give an account of their names, as also of the bearers; but they know nothing concerning the corpse.’
Horses and cows (according to the same credulous author) have certainly sometimes the same faculty; and he endeavours to prove it by the signs of fear which the animals exhibit when second-sighted persons see visions in the same place.
‘The seers’ (he continues) ‘are generally illiterate and wellmeaning people, and altogether void of design: nor could I ever learn that any of them ever made the least gain by it; neither is it reputable among them to have that faculty. Besides, the people of the Isles are not so credulous as to believe implicitly before the thing predicted is accomplished; but when it is actually accomplished afterwards, it is not in their power to deny it without offering violence to their own sense and reason. Besides, if the seers were deceivers, can it be reasonable to imagine that all the islanders who have not the second sight should combine together and offer violence to their understandings and senses to enforce themselves to believe a lie from age to age? There are several persons among them whose title and education raise them above the suspicion of concurring with an impostor merely to gratify an illiterate, contemptible set of persons; nor can reasonable persons believe that children, horses, and cows should be pre-engaged in a combination in favour of second sight.’
Now, in darkness and billows, he sweeps from my sight:
Rise, rise! ye wild tempests, and cover his flight!
'Tis finished. Their thunders are hushed on the moors:
Culloden is lost, and my country deplores.
For the red eye of battle is shut in despair.
Say, mounts he the ocean-wave, banished, forlorn,
Like a limb from his country cast bleeding and torn?
Ah no! for a darker departure is near;
The war-drum is muffled, and black is the bier;
His death-bell is tolling: oh! mercy dispel
Yon sight that it freezes my spirit to tell!
Life flutters convulsed in his quivering limbs,
And his blood-streaming nostril in agony swims;
Accursed be the faggots that blaze at his feet,
Where his heart shall be thrown ere it ceases to beat,
With the smoke of its ashes to poison the gale—
LOCHIEL
Down, soothless insulter! I trust not the tale:
For never shall Albin a destiny meet
So black with dishonour, so foul with retreat.
Though my perishing ranks should be strewed in their gore,
Like ocean-weeds heaped on the surf-beaten shore,
Lochiel, untainted by flight or by chains,
While the kindling of life in his bosom remains
Shall victor exult, or in death be laid low
With his back to the field, and his feet to the foe!
And, leaving in battle no blot on his name,
Look proudly to Heaven from the death-bed of fame.
LORD ULLIN'S DAUGHTER
Cries ‘Boatman, do not tarry!
And I'll give thee a silver pound
To row us o'er the ferry.’
This dark and stormy water?’
‘O, I'm the chief of Ulva's isle,
And this Lord Ullin's daughter.
Three days we've fled together,
For, should he find us in the glen,
My blood would stain the heather.
Should they our steps discover,
Then who will cheer my bonny bride
When they have slain her lover?’
‘I'll go, my chief! I'm ready;
It is not for your silver bright,
But for your winsome lady.
In danger shall not tarry;
So, though the waves are raging white
I'll row you o'er the ferry.’
The water-wraith was shrieking;
And in the scowl of heaven each face
Grew dark as they were speaking.
And as the night grew drearer,
Adown the glen rode armèd men—
Their trampling sounded nearer.
‘Though tempests round us gather;
I'll meet the raging of the skies,
But not an angry father.’
A stormy sea before her,—
When, oh! too strong for human hand,
The tempest gathered o'er her.
Of waters fast prevailing:
Lord Ullin reached that fatal shore,—
His wrath was changed to wailing.
His child he did discover:
One lovely hand she stretched for aid,
And one was round her lover.
Across the stormy water:
‘And I'll forgive your Highland chief,
My daughter! oh my daughter!’
Return or aid preventing;
The waters wild went o'er his child,
And he was left lamenting.
GLENARA
Where a band cometh slowly with weeping and wail?
'Tis the chief of Glenara laments for his dear;
And her sire and the people are called to her bier.
Her kinsmen they followed, but mourned not aloud:
Their plaids all their bosoms were folded around:
They marched all in silence,—they looked on the ground.
To a heath where the oak-tree grew lonely and hoar;
‘Now here let us place the gray stone of her cairn:
Why speak ye no word!’—said Glenara the stern.
Why fold ye your mantles, why cloud ye your brows?’
So spake the rude chieftain:—no answer is made,
But each mantle unfolding a dagger displayed.
Cried a voice from the kinsmen, all wrathful and loud:
‘And empty that shroud and that coffin did seem;
Glenara! Glenara! now read me my dream!’
When the shroud was unclosed and no lady was seen;
When a voice from the kinsmen spoke louder in scorn—
'Twas the youth who had loved the fair Ellen of Lorn—
I dreamt that her lord was a barbarous chief:
On a rock of the ocean fair Ellen did seem;
Glenara! Glenara! now read me my dream!’
And the desert revealed where his lady was found;
From a rock of the ocean that beauty is borne—
Now joy to the house of fair Ellen of Lorn!
DIRGE OF WALLACE
And chanted their holiest hymn;
But her brow and her bosom were damp with affright,
Her eye was all sleepless and dim.
When a deathwatch beat in her lonely room,
When her curtain had shook of its own accord
And the raven had flapped at her window board,
To tell of her warrior's doom.
For the soul of my knight so dear;
And call me a widow this wretched day
Since the warning of God is here.
The lord of my bosom is doomed to die;
His valorous heart they have wounded deep;
And blood-red tears shall his country weep
For Wallace of Elderslie.’
Ere the loud matin bell was rung,
That a trumpet of death on an English tower
Had the dirge of her champion sung.
On the high-born blood of a martyr slain,
No anthem was sung at his lowly death-bed;
No weeping was there when his bosom bled
And his heart was rent in twain.
Was true to that knight forlorn,
And hosts of a thousand were scattered like deer
At the blast of the hunter's horn!
With the yellow-haired chiefs of his native land;
For his lance was not shivered on helmet or shield,
And the sword that was fit for archangel to wield
Was light in his terrible hand.
For his long-loved country die,
The bugle ne'er sung to a braver knight
Than William of Elderslie!
His head unentombed shall with glory be palmed;
From its blood-streaming altar his spirit shall start;
Though the raven has fed on his mouldering heart
A nobler was never embalmed!
SONG
[Earl March looked on his dying child]
And, smit with grief to view her—
‘The youth,’ he cried, ‘whom I exiled
Shall be restored to woo her.’
His coming to discover;
And her love looked up to Ellen's bower,
And she looked on her lover—
Though her smile on him was dwelling.
‘And am I then forgot—forgot?’—
It broke the heart of Ellen.
Her cheek is cold as ashes;
Nor love's own kiss shall wake those eyes
To lift their silken lashes.
GILDEROY
That bears my love from me:
I hear the dead note of the drum,
I mark the gallows-tree!
The trumpet speaks thy name;
And must my Gilderoy depart
To bear a death of shame?
No mourner wipes a tear;
The gallow's foot is all thy tomb,
The sledge is all thy bier.
So soon, so sad, to part,
When first in Roslin's lovely glen
You triumphed o'er my heart?
Your hunter garb was trim;
And graceful was the ribbon green
That bound your manly limb.
Those limbs in fetters bound;
Or hear, upon thy scaffold floor,
The midnight hammer sound.
The guiltless to pursue—
My Gilderoy was ever kind,
He could not injure you!
Thy widow all forlorn
When every mean and cruel eye
Regards my woe with scorn?
And hate thine orphan boy;
Alas! his infant beauty wears
The form of Gilderoy.
That wrapt thy mouldering clay,
And weep and linger on the ground,
And sigh my heart away.
LINES ON THE CAMP HILL NEAR HASTINGS
Ere the twinkling of stars had begun,
Or the lark took his leave
Of the skies and the sweet setting sun,
Where the Norman encamped him of old
With his bowmen and knights
And his banner all burnished with gold.
There his minstrelsy sat harp in hand
In pavilion wide;
And they chanted the deeds of Roland.
With a vision my fancy inspires,
And I hear the trump sound
As it marshalled our chivalry's sires.
Stood the captors of England's domains
That ennobled her breed
And high-mettled the blood of her veins.
As the sun's setting splendour was thrown,
Thence they looked o'er a realm—
And to-morrow beheld it their own.
LINES SUGGESTED BY THE STATUE OF ARNOLD VON WINKELRIED STANZ-UNTERWALDEN
For an account of this patriotic Swiss and his heroic death at the battle of Sempach see Dr. Beattie's Switzerland Illustrated, vol. ii. pp. 111-15.
The advocates of classical learning tell us that without classic historians we should never become acquainted with the most splendid traits of human character; but one of those traits, patriotic self-devotion, may surely be heard of elsewhere without learning Greek and Latin. There are few who have read modern history unacquainted with the noble voluntary death of the Switzer Winkelried. Whether he was a peasant or man of superior birth is a point not quite settled in history, though I am inclined to suspect that he was simply a peasant. But this is certain, that in the battle of Sempach, perceiving that there was no other means of breaking the heavy-armed lines of the Austrians than by gathering as many of their spears as he could grasp together, he opened a passage for his fellow-combatants, who with hammers and hatchets hewed down the mailed men-at-arms, and won the victory.
Though mark'd with majesty by Nature's hand,
What charm ennobles most thy landscape's face?
Th' heroic memory of thy native race,
Who forced tyrannic hosts to bleed or flee,
And made their rocks the ramparts of the free!
Their fastnesses roll'd back th' invading tide
Of conquest, and their mountains taught them pride.
Hence they have patriot names,—in fancy's eye
Bright as their glaciers glittering in the sky;
Like shadows seem, and unsubstantial things.
Their guiltless glory mocks oblivion's rust,—
Imperishable, for their cause was just.
Their lyres, and spirit-stirring anthems sung;
Heroes of chivalry! whose banners grace
The aisles of many a consecrated place,—
Confess how few of you can match in fame
The martyr Winkelried's immortal name!
THE BRAVE ROLAND
The tradition which forms the substance of these stanzas is still preserved in Germany. An ancient tower on a height, called the Rolandseck, a few miles above Bonn on the Rhine, is shown as the habitation which Roland built in sight of a nunnery, into which his mistress had retired on having heard an unfounded account of his death. Whatever may be thought of the credibility of the legend, its scenery must be recollected with pleasure by every one who has visited the romantic landscape of the Drachenfels, the Rolandseck, and the beautiful adjacent islet of the Rhine, where a nunnery still stands.
False tidings reached the Rhenish strand
That he had fallen in fight;
And thy faithful bosom swooned with pain,
O loveliest maiden of Allémayne!
For the loss of thine own true knight.
In yon Nonnenwerder's cloisters pale?
For her vow had scarce been sworn
And the fatal mantle o'er her flung
When the Drachenfels to a trumpet rung—
'Twas her own dear warrior's horn!
She would have hung upon his neck
Had he come but yester-even;
And he had clasped those peerless charms
That shall never, never fill his arms,
Or meet him but in heaven.
He could not bid that spot adieu;
It was dear still 'midst his woes;
For he loved to breathe the neighbouring air,
And to think she blessed him in her prayer
When the Hallelujah rose.
Which he built above the Nun's green isle;
Thence sad and oft looked he
(When the chant and organ sounded slow)
On the mansion of his love below;
For herself he might not see.
Her image filled his dying brain
When he fell, and wished to fall:
And her name was in his latest sigh,
When Roland, the flower of chivalry,
Expired at Roncevall.
ADELGITHA
And sad pale Adelgitha came,
When forth a valiant champion bounded
And slew the slanderer of her fame.
But when he knelt to claim her glove—
‘Seek not,’ she cried, ‘oh! gallant stranger,
For hapless Adelgitha's love.
Whose arm should now have set me free;
And I must wear the willow garland
For him that's dead, or false to me.’
He raised his vizor: at the sight
She fell into his arms and fainted;
It was indeed her own true knight!
THE SPECTRE BOAT
A BALLAD
Who broke her heart and died to hide her blushing cheek from scorn.
One night he dreamt he wooed her in their wonted bower of love,
Where the flowers sprang thick around them and the birds sang sweet above.
And her lips grew black beneath his kiss, from love's delicious hue.
What more he dreamt he told to none; but, shuddering, pale, and dumb,
Looked out upon the waves, like one that knew his hour was come.
And the ship rode where Mount Etna lights the deep Levantine sea;
When beneath its glare a boat came, rowed by a woman in her shroud,
Who, with eyes that made our blood run cold, stood up and spoke aloud:—
Come down, false Ferdinand, for whom I broke my peace with heaven!’—
Like the bird that shrieks and flutters in the gazing serpent's thrall.
For the spectre and her winding-sheet shone blue with hideous light;
Like a fiery wheel the boat spun with the waving of her hand,
And round they went, and down they went, as the cock crew from the land.
THE RITTER BANN
Came back renowned in arms,
But scorning jousts of chivalry
And love and ladies' charms.
Was wrapped in thoughts of gloom,
And in Vienna's hostelrie
Slow paced his lonely room.
Whose voice, he was aware,
He oft at mass had listened to
In the holy house of prayer.
A fresh and fair old man:
His reverend air arrested even
The gloomy Ritter Bann.
Come clad in Scotch attire,
The Ritter's colour went and came,
And loud he spoke in ire:
Name not her name to me;
I wish it blotted from my brain:
Art poor?—take alms, and flee.’
‘This case your ear demands;’
And the crone cried, with a cross enclosed
In both her trembling hands—
And he that shall rebut
Sweet mercy's suit,—on him the gates
Of mercy shall be shut.
Your cousin Jane in spring;
In autumn, when you went to search
For churchmen's pardoning,
Betrothed her to De Grey,
And the ring you put upon her hand
Was wrenched by force away.
Crying, “Help me, nurse, to flee
To my Howel Bann's Glamorgan hills:”
But word arrived—ah me!—
By foul means or by fair,
To-morrow morning was to set
The seal on her despair.
A ship at Hartland Bay;
By his aid from her cruel kin
I bore my bird away.
Green myrtle shores we fled;
And the Hand that sent the ravens
To Elijah gave us bread.
From England sent us word
You had gone into some far countrie,
In grief and gloom, he heard.
Your wrath defamed my child;
And you—ay, blush, Sir, as you should—
Believed, and were beguiled.
To roam the world; and we
Would both have sped, and begged our bread—
But so it might not be.
She bore a boy, Sir Bann,
Who grew as fair your likeness proof
As child e'er grew like man.
While heath bloomed on the moor,
Her beauty struck young Lord Kinghorn
As he hunted past our door.
And roused his mother's pride;
Who came to us in high disdain,—
“And where's the face,” she cried,
So wretched for his wife?—
Dost love thy husband? Know, my son
Has sworn to seek his life.”
For our mite was wearing scant,
And, unless that dame would aid us,
There was none to aid our want.
What all our woes had been;
And, though she was a stern ladie,
The tears stood in her een.
My child to her had sworn
That, even if made a widow, she
Would never wed Kinghorn.’
The Abbot, standing by:—
‘Three months ago a wounded man
To our abbey came to die.
And hand obdurate clenched,
Speak of the worm that never dies,
And the fire that is not quenched.
He left atonement brief
For years of anguish to the breasts
His guilt had wrung with grief.
Beneath my mother's roof;
I loved her, but against my flame
Her purity was proof.
That mood she did not check,
But let her husband's miniature
Be copied from her neck,
Took care to him was borne
Nought but his picture's counterfeit,
And Jane's reported scorn.
My slave came back and lied
Whate'er I wished; she clasped her child,
And swooned, and all but died.
Quench not my flame, but stir;
The very hate I bore her mate
Increased my love for her.
Joy flushed the face of Jane;
And while she blessed his name, her smile
Struck fire into my brain.
Sought out its champion;
And, if my broad-sword failed at last,
'Twas long and well laid on.
My foe's the Ritter Bann.”
The wafer to his lips was borne,
And we shrived the dying man.
The Turks at Warradein;
But I see my tale has changed you pale.’
The Abbot went for wine;
It out, and knelt and smiled:—
The stunned knight saw himself restored
To childhood in his child;
Laughed loud and wept anon,
And with a shower of kisses pressed
The darling little one.
Look not again so pale;
Kinghorn's old dame grew harsh to her.’
‘And has she ta'en the veil?’
Rash words.’ They sat all three,
And the boy played with the knight's broad star
As he kept him on his knee.
The Abbot further said;
‘Time draws a veil o'er beauty's face
More deep than cloister's shade.
Scarce love perhaps for life.’
‘Hush, Abbot,’ cried the Ritter Bann,
‘Or tell me where's my wife.’
The inn's adjacent room,
And there a lovely woman stood—
Tears bathed her beauty's bloom.
Unnumbered hours of pain;
Such was the throb and mutual sob
Of the knight embracing Jane.
THE TURKISH LADY
Called each Paynim voice to prayer,
And the star that faded slowly
Left to dews the freshened air.
Calm and sweet the moonlight rose;
Even a captive spirit tasted
Half oblivion of his woes.
Came an Eastern lady bright:
She, in spite of tyrants jealous,
Saw and loved an English knight.
Foes have dragged thee here to dwell,
Where poor Christians as they languish
Hear no sound of Sabbath bell?’
When the Cresent shone afar
Like a pale disastrous planet
O'er the purple tide of war—
Lady, I was captive made,—
Bleeding for my Christian nation
By the walls of high Belgrade.’
From my turban set thee free?’
‘Lady no!—the gift were cruel,
Ransomed, yet if reft of thee.
Christian climes should we behold?’
‘Nay, bold knight! I would not leave thee
Were thy ransom paid in gold!’
Rose the midnight star to view,
When to quit her father's mansion
Thrice she wept, and bade adieu!
Tyrant barks, in vain ye ride!’
Soon at Rhodes the British lover
Clasped his blooming Eastern bride.
| The complete poetical works of Thomas Campbell | |