Historical & Legendary Ballads & Songs By Walter Thornbury. Illustrated by J. Whistler, F. Walker, John Tenniel, J. D. Watson, W. Small, F. Sandys, G. J. Pinwell, T. Morten, M. J. Lawless, and many others |
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The Legend of the Lockharts.
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 | Historical & Legendary Ballads & Songs |  |
The Legend of the Lockharts.
I
King Robert on his death-bed lay, wasted in every limb,The priests had left, Black Douglas now alone was watching him:
The earl had wept to hear those words, “When I am gone to doom,
Take thou my heart and bear it straight unto the Holy Tomb.”
II
Douglas shed bitter tears of grief—he loved the buried man,So bade farewell to home and wife, to brother and to clan;
And soon the Bruce's heart, embalmed, in silver casket locked,
Within a galley, white with sails, upon the blue waves rocked.
III
In Spain they rested; there the king besought the Scottish earl,To drive the Saracens from Spain, his galley sails to furl:
It was the brave knight's eagerness to quell the Paynim brood
That made him then forget the oath he'd sworn upon the Rood.
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IV
That was his sin: good angels frowned upon him as he wentWith vizor down and spear in rest, lips closed, and black brow bent;
Upon the turbans fierce he spurred, the charger he bestrode
Was splashed with blood, their robes and flags he trampled on the road.
V
The Moors came fast with cymbal-clash and tossing javelin,Ten thousand horsemen, at the least, round Castile closing in;
Quick as a deer's foot snaps the ice Black Douglas thundered through,
And struck with sword and smote with axe among the heathen crew.
VI
The horse-tail banners beaten down, the mounted archers fled—There came full many an Arab curse from faces smeared with red:
The vizor fell, a Scottish shaft had struck him on the breast;
Many a Moslem's frightened horse was bleeding head and chest.
VII
But suddenly the caitiffs turned and gathered like a net;In closed the tossing sabres fast, and soon were crimson wet;
Steel jarred on steel—war hammers smote on helmet and on sword,
Yet Douglas never ceased to charge upon that heathen horde.
VIII
Till all at once his eager eye discerned amid the fightSt. Clair of Roslyn, Bruce's friend, a brave and trusty knight,
Beset with Moors who hewed at him with sabres dripping blood—
'T was in a rice-field where he stood, close to an orange-wood.
IX
Then to the rescue of St. Clair Black Douglas spurred amain:The Moslems circled him around, and shouting charged again;
Then took he from his neck the heart, and as the case he threw,
“Pass first in fight,” he cried aloud, “as thou wert wont to do!”
X
They found him ere the sun had set upon that fatal day;His body was above the case, that closely guarded lay,
His swarthy face was grim in death, his sable hair was stained
With the life-blood of the felon Moors, whom he had struck and brained.
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XI
Sir Simon Lockhart, knight of Lee, bore home the silver case,To shrine it in a stately grave and in a holy place.
The Douglas deep in Spanish ground they left in royal tomb,
To wait in hope and patient trust the trumpet of the Doom.
| Historical & Legendary Ballads & Songs | |