B 3 553 3b0 
 
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M E E L I N 
 
 AND OTHER POEMS 
 
MERLIN 
 
 AND OTHER POEMS 
 
MERLIN 
 
 AND OTHER POEMS 
 
 JOHN VEITCH 
 
 PROFESSOR IN THE UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW; 
 
 AUTHOR OF 'the HISTORY AND POETRY 
 
 OF THE SCOTTISH BORDER,' ETC. 
 
 WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS 
 EDINBUliGH AND LONDON 
 
 MDCCCLXXXIX 
 
 All Eights reserved 
 
LOAN STACK 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 95-3 
 
 FIRST WORDS 
 
 MERLIN, 
 
 I. A BAPTISM AT ST GOEDIAN's CROSS, 
 II. IN MEMOEIAM : JOCKIE, 
 
 III. OCTOBER IN THE SCOTTISH LOWLANDS, 
 
 IV. GLENHEURIE, .... 
 V. A PICTURE AT GLOAMIN', 
 
 VI. THE VOICE OF THE DANISH BOY, . 
 VII. THE CLOUDBERRY, 
 VIII. ANDREW HISLOP — MARTYR, . 
 IX. THE RETURN OF SPRING, 
 
 X. OCTOBER, 
 
 XI. A PASSING SCENE ON THE HILLS, , 
 XII. IN MEMORIAM : JOHN BROWN, M.D., 
 
 XIII. MY OWN FAMILIAR HILLS, . 
 
 XIV. TO , 
 
 XV. THE CYMRIC TOWN, 
 
 XVI. IN MEMORIAM : REV. JAMES RUSSELL, 
 
 PAGE 
 
 1 
 
 4 
 37 
 41 
 45 
 48 
 55 
 57 
 60 
 62 
 66 
 69 
 71 
 72 
 75 
 83 
 86 
 91 
 
 46^ 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 XVII. THE SYCAMOEE BEFORE MY WINDOW, 
 XVIII. THE HUNDLESHOPES, 
 XIX. A REMINISCENCE, .... 
 XX. MY REPLY TO THE SHEPHERD, . 
 XXI. SMAYLHOLM TOWER, 
 XXII. IN MEMORIAM : WILLIAM BURNETT OF 
 EARNS, 
 
 XXIII. IN THE rhymer's GLEN, . 
 
 XXIV. ST mary's loch, .... 
 
 XXV. ON FIRST HEARING THE NOTE OF THE 
 CUCKOO THIS SPRING, . 
 XXVI. ON THE GLENRATH HEIGHTS, . 
 XXVII. IN MEMORIAM : JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP- 
 
 XXVIII. ON CADEMUIR, 
 
 XXIX. IN YARROW, 
 
 XXX. IN MEMORIAM : LAURA, . 
 
 XXXI. THE TWEED, 
 
 XXXII. IN MEMORIAM : LORD DALKEITH, 
 
 XXXIII. IN MANOR, 
 
 XXXIV. IN MANOR, 
 
 XXXV. THE ECLIPSE OF THE MOON, 
 
 XXXVI. THE SEVEN SPEARS OF WEDDERBURN, 
 XXXVII. A LEGEND OF NEIDPATH CASTLE, 
 XXXVIII. THE LAIRD OF SCHELYNLAW, . 
 XXXIX. THE DOW GLEN, .... 
 
 XL. TAMMAS TRAILSTICKS, THE DOCTOR'S MAN 
 
 XLI. TO REDCAP, 
 
 LAST WORDS, 
 
 94 
 
 98 
 
 99 
 
 101 
 
 105 
 
 108 
 111 
 115 
 
 117 
 119 
 122 
 127 
 130 
 134 
 140 
 143 
 147 
 149 
 153 
 155 
 160 
 165 
 173 
 179 
 183 
 191 
 
FIEST WOEDS. 
 
 What hills and streams have taught to me, 
 Hoiv Heaven's face hath touched my heart, 
 
 In summer shine, 'neath lointer sides, 
 To those loho care, this I imjmrt, 
 
 Soine straitis from Border days of old ; 
 
 Weird visions e'en of earlier time ! 
 High daring, glamour, hapless fate, — 
 
 These mingle in the changing rhyme. 
 
 Esteem or slight the simple song, 
 To me is nought, I thee assure ; 
 
 Enough those thr tilings of my heart — 
 Those Nature-breathings, sacred, pure , 
 
 A 
 
FIRST WORDS. 
 
 On heights withdrawal, where hum-heads croon 
 
 To loneliness a music meet. 
 Where tormentil, and heather-hell, 
 
 And hlaeherry crown the wild retreat : 
 
 While gleams glide o'er the silent hills, 
 And touch them with a golden grace ; 
 
 And up their cUmhing trodden ways 
 In single-file the lohite sheep pass. 
 
 Tims I have known the summer peace — 
 No purer treasure soul can find ; 
 
 Yet oft with Thee my heart has sped, 
 Thou Spirit of the mountain wiiul. 
 
 Wlien clouds were driven, mists were cleft, 
 And the bent tossed in stormy mood ; 
 
 Mine ear alone to list thy voice 
 Upon the moorland solitude. 
 
FIRST WORDS. 
 
 Thus would I touch each living soul 
 To know and feel as I have known, 
 
 On sun-smit height, in lonely glen, 
 The vision from the Eternal Throne/ 
 
MERLIN. 
 
 The Merlin of tliis poem is Merlin Caledonius, 
 known also as Merlin Wylt and Silvestris. He 
 ought not to be identified with Myrdin Emrys, or 
 Merlin Amhrosius, who was the vates of Vortigern, 
 and also apparently of Aurelius Ambrosianus, — 
 the man of Eoman descent who superseded Vor- 
 tigern in the Cymric supremacy, and lost it again 
 about 465. This Myrdin Emrys was probably also 
 the Merlin of Uther Pendragon and of Arthur. 
 While the name of the latter is associated with 
 Dinas Emrys, or Fort of Emrys, in the Vale of 
 the Waters — Nant Gwynant, which circles round 
 
MERLIN. 5 
 
 the rugged grandeur of the southern slopes of 
 Snowdon — that of the former, Merlin Caledonius, 
 is inseparably joined to the wavy, far-spreading, 
 and heather-streaked hiUs between which the Pow- 
 sail Bum makes its way to the Tweed in the haugh 
 of Drummelzier. Out of the two Merlins — the 
 earlier and the later — the romancers of the eleventh 
 and following centuries formed a third or legendary 
 Merlin. ISTow the personage appears as a vulgar 
 wizard and soothsayer, master of the art of glam- 
 oury, to be finally overcome by a woman's wiles, 
 and kept for ever in hopeless captivity. 
 
 The Caledonian Merlin is a sufficiently distinct 
 historical personage. He was the son of Morvryn, 
 who was descended from Coel Godebawc, the head 
 of one of the main royal lines of the Cymri. He 
 had a twin-sister Gwendydd. He was the friend 
 of the Prince Gwenddoleu, a lord or king of the 
 N"orth, and he was present at the decisive battle of 
 Ardderyd in 573, when the contest lay between the 
 Pagan and Christian forces of the time. Merlin 
 
6 MERLIN. 
 
 was on the Pagan or losing side. After the defeat 
 and the death of his leader Gwenddoleu, he fled 
 to the wilds of Drmnmelzier, in the wood of Cale- 
 don. There he spent some years, reputed insane, 
 probably only heart-broken, and despairing of the 
 Cymric cause and his OAvn fortunes, — perhaps 
 doubting the trustworthiness of his original faith 
 or I^aturq-worship. Finally, he is said to have died 
 at the hands — rather stones and clubs — of the herds- 
 men of a princeling of the district, then incorporated 
 in the kingdom afterwards known as Strathclyde, 
 and ruled over by Eydderch Hael, originally lord of 
 Llanerch, or Lanark. INIerlin's grave is pointed out 
 by tradition near the village of Drummelzier, by 
 the side of the Powsail Burn as it joins the Tweed, 
 There can be little doubt, looking to external 
 and internal evidence, that this MerUn was the 
 author of certain poems now preserved in the ' Four 
 Ancient Books of Wales,' and that to him also are 
 to be assigned portions of the Merlinian poems, 
 in which there occur interpolations of a later date. 
 
MERLIN. 7 
 
 The poems show a peculiarly delicate feeling for 
 nature and natural objects — tree, hill, and fountain 
 — and they are pervaded by a cry of wailing and 
 despair for the fortunes of the Cymric race. Many 
 of the lines show the deepest pathos ; some of them 
 are incorporated in the following poem. 
 
 Merlin's relation to the Christianity of the time 
 is indicated in the poem. Originally a ISTature- 
 worshipper — probably with priestly functions — one 
 who reverenced the powers and objects of JSTature, 
 and the sun above all, as the lord and symbol of 
 creative and sustaining power, he was more or less 
 affected by the Christianity of the time, but he 
 never fully embraced it. If it ever had a hold on 
 him, he appears to have relapsed from it in his later 
 years; although conceptions from the faith which 
 was making progress around him mingled with his 
 original beliefs and pretensions to supernatural 
 power and prophetic insight. This is the Merlin 
 as depicted in the poem. It opens immediately 
 after the battle of Ardderyd, when, in doubt and 
 
8 MERLIN. 
 
 despair, the hopes of his life broken, he had fled to 
 the retreat and shelter afforded by the .hills and glens 
 of Upper Tweeddale, where, more than a thousand 
 years afterwards, men whose faith was of quite an- 
 other type found refuge. Here, in the centre of the 
 wood of Caledon, frequenting a fountain on the 
 hills, he is said to have lived for some years ere he 
 met his violent fate. Merlin was to a certain ex- 
 tent contemporary with Kentigern, who is said to 
 have met him on the wUds which he haunted, and 
 sought to convert him to the Christianity of the 
 time, with, however, but partial and temporary 
 effect. The details of the interview, as given hun- 
 dreds of years afterwards in the * Scotichronicon,' 
 are of course a priestly invention, and wholly un- 
 trustworthy. The character of the Merlin of the 
 poem is, I venture to thiuk, in accordance with all 
 the earliest and genuine information we have regard- 
 ing him. His sister Gwendydd, The Dawn, — her 
 affection and companionship in his life and troubles 
 — and his early love, Hwimleian, The Gleam, — have 
 
MERLIN. 9 
 
 their warrant in the original poems, and in the 
 later ones, still of a very early time, in which ref- 
 erence is made to the Bard and Seer of this semi- 
 historic, semi-mythic epoch of the ancient Cymri. 
 
 2ith October 1888. 
 
10 
 
 MERLIN. 
 
 PERSONS. 
 
 Merlin — Bard, Seer, Wizard, 
 GwENDYDD (The Dawn)— His twin-sister. 
 HwiMLEiAN (Tlie Gleam) — His early love. 
 
 Merlin {in the Glen, and on Drummelzier Law). 
 
 All night I've wandered in the glen, 'mid hum 
 
 Of hidden waters moving in the gloom, 
 
 And eerie sounds, strange voices from th' unseen. 
 
 And things have shaped themselves upon the air, 
 
 Some mocking me, and some soliciting 
 
 My evil will ; — dim, weird sprites, that pass 
 
 'Twixt sky and earth in dark hours ere the morn,- 
 
MERLIN. 11 
 
 Form after form in crowding mystery, 
 
 Where none can mark the mien of living tiling, 
 
 Or pause upon a face for love or light ; 
 
 But all that seems to be doth also pass 
 
 In mockery of show to mortal eye. 
 
 The hill-top now is gained, and lo ! afar 
 The eastern summits redden with the dawn ; 
 The moor around me wakes to growing sound 
 And stir of life, all tremulous before 
 The high on-coming of the lord of day. 
 
 This morn I bow before thee, lord of light 
 And life ! — my hope, my fear, my reverence ! 
 Of thee unworthy, and my early vows. 
 Far-gleaming arrows, piercing feeble mists, 
 Herald thine uprise ; low down in the vales, 
 That pour their loving tribute to the Tweed, 
 The waters shimmer 'mid the morning's joy ; 
 Around me burn-heads croon, and moorland bhds 
 Awake, a-wing, pipe brief glad notes to thee, 
 
12 MERLIN. 
 
 The brightening lord of happy melody. 
 Now part in twain the curtains of the dawn, 
 Each hill-top is aflame, and thou hast set 
 Thyself, fiill-orhed, in empire o'er the day : — 
 Aglow as in that dawn when first enthroned, 
 The wasting ages taking nought from thee, 
 Nor tainted by the evil of this earth, 
 Thou layest now, as new birth of the morn, 
 Thy strength of glory on the circling hills. 
 I worship thee, sovereign of the sky. 
 The symbol of the God who is unseen. 
 
 Inspirer, thou, of life and hope and joy, 
 My pulses beat with thine. Again I feel 
 The blood that leaps to high ambition's quest, 
 And wakes, as sudden flash, my vanished dream, 
 To hold in leash the powers of all this world, 
 Be lord of nature and of human lives, — 
 Phantasm of youth that beckoned and beguiled 
 To empire and emprise, wild, subtle, vain — 
 As if this feeble hand could pluck from thee. 
 
MERLIN. 13 
 
 king of (lay, thy lofty radiance, 
 And usurp thy throne. 
 
 To know the soul of things has been my quest, 
 
 To feel the beating of the inmost heart 
 
 That pulses through the world,— to know and be 
 
 As God, — a kmg o'er kings, with subtler power 
 
 Than that of lords who rule by force of arm. 
 
 Or wavering tie of human sympathy, — 
 
 This, this, the dream that dazzled all my youth ; 
 
 And I have dared and done, in this my quest, 
 
 What no man knows, seen what no eye hath seen — 
 
 Weird sights not utterable in mortal words, 
 
 Strange forms o' morn, shapes in the weather-gleam. 
 
 That silent move and pass along the rim, 
 
 Clear-set, of the dim world that engirds the hills. 
 
 Ay, at grey dawn, I've struggled with the bird 
 
 Of wrath, until the sun came to mine aid, 
 
 And smote the hovering shadow, beak and wing. — 
 
 And now the dream is riven, shattered. 
 
 As when the great west wind in strength has struck 
 
14 MERLIN. 
 
 The summer heaven ; and lo ! we see but shreds 
 Of all its gilded towers, and broken shapes 
 Athwart the storm-cleft sky. 
 
 To stand supreme in mystery of might ; 
 
 To lead the battle on to victory ; 
 
 Mine was the pledge, assurance, and the hope, 
 
 The inspiration, and the faith of men. 
 
 Their trusting look to me as on the morn 
 
 They passed, fiend - blessed, to that green plain 
 
 that lay 
 Between the Liddel's tide and Carwinelow ; 
 This lives for aye deep scarred upon my heart, 
 I see the shock, and hear the frusch of spears. 
 Edge grinding edge, all through the fatal hours ; 
 Twice seven armies locked in deadly grip, 
 Until at length that Cross, upraised against 
 The evening sky, shot o'er the struggling hosts 
 One blinding ray, as of the wrath of heaven ; 
 And in that hour supremo of fate my power 
 Was stricken, and each sprite grew palsied-pale, 
 
MERLIN. 15 
 
 And passed away before my 'wildered eye, 
 Dissolved as phantom of the feeble air ; 
 And then — was nought but faces of the dead, 
 Upturned, upbraiding, in the gloamin' grey ; 
 And all was laid 'neath cover of the shade, 
 And all was hushed save the unheeding stream. 
 
 My prince, my Gwenddoleu, whose golden torques 
 
 I wore, and thou, well-loved Gwendydd's son, 
 
 Thou fearless bearer of the white-rimmed shield, 
 
 Where may I seek you now ? Where are my dead, 
 
 The dead of Ardderyd 1 To me ye come 
 
 No more ; no more again your hands I touch, — 
 
 To me your eyes glance never light of life ! 
 
 " Hath not the burden been consigned to earth 1 
 
 And every one must give up what he loves." 
 
 The budding thorn is green, the birch is blest, 
 
 And sweet the melody and chirp of birds ; 
 
 But ye are still, my ]\Ioryen and Mordav ! 
 
 Are ye now spirits of the nerveless clouds 
 
 That speck the shadowed hills and sweep the moor ; 
 
16 MERLIN. 
 
 That dwell in air, and come, and passing wail. 
 Behold the misery of race and kin. 
 But have no power to stretch a hand in aid 
 Of their fell lot ? Oft I hear a voice 
 A-crying in the night, see glimpsing forms 
 In outbreak of the moon through riven sky. 
 Oh ! unavailing wail and stricken arm ! 
 Is this your heaven ? 
 
 Or are these seemings of the strained sense — 
 
 The fond heart's quickening of the hopeless dead ? 
 
 And is it so that all are surely gone, 
 
 As is the creed of that far Orient, 
 
 Whence my race has sprung — to Nirvana's shade. 
 
 The formless state where nought is marked or 
 
 known, 
 N"o sense, no thought, pain, pleasure, or desire ; 
 Where keen emotion hath no quickening, 
 And resolute will, unstrung, can dare no deed 
 Of good or ill, and hath no fate to bear : 
 Where comes not e'en a passing dream to stir 
 
MERLIN, 17 
 
 The imconscioiis brain, or glint of memory 
 Across the darkened past ; but all is one — 
 An absolute repose, alike for those 
 Once harassed by the pains of earthly life, 
 And souls that lived spell-bound in human bliss, 
 Heroes in battle slain, the weak who passed 
 From cottage couch, the proud from palace-hall, 
 The maiden in her bloom, the mother, child ; 
 In the absorbing All are life and death ahke, — • 
 Close folded in unconscious unity ? 
 
 What, then, this life of ours but pain and wreck ! — 
 Mirage that hovers fair o'er youthful sky ; 
 Inwoven dream that parts as mist before 
 The sun of noon ; mid-life a battle 'gainst 
 Fierce striving powers for issues no one knows 
 Are in their final outcome good or ill, — 
 None seeing whither tends the deed we do 
 In the mysterious process of the world ! 
 
18 MERLIN. 
 
 GwENDYDD {Tlie Dawn — his twin-sister — sings ; 
 she addresses liim as Lallogen, twin-brother). 
 
 Lallogen ! princely JNIorvryii's son, 
 
 Of olden heroes born, 
 Spirit divine, incarnate god, 
 
 To thee I bow this morn ! 
 
 Thou, lord of airy powers, that dwell 
 In speed of the towering cloud, 
 
 In far oiit-flash of the levin fell. 
 In the croak of the raven brood ; 
 
 In the hurrying mist of the moor, 
 
 Thy vassal spirits troop, 
 In the striving blast that tears the pine, 
 
 In eagle forms that swoop 
 
MERLIN. 19 
 
 From their course in the rack of the sky — 
 Playmates of the stormy gleam — 
 
 "Winging to earth the stroke of fate, 
 As well to thee may beseem ! 
 
 At thy bidding the wrath of the storm 
 Suddenly smites earth's rest, 
 
 And swiftly the burns arise and roar 
 In awe of thy dread behest. 
 
 The gentle milkwort bows its head, 
 Cowering beneath the hour, 
 
 When thy spirit feels not a bound 
 To its lust of evil power. 
 
 All unlovely, brother, is might. 
 When slave of the wayward will ; 
 
 And passion that knows but to smite 
 Is self-accursed with its ill. 
 
20 MERLIN. 
 
 Once blameless wert thou in thy strength, 
 
 As on that eve of old, 
 When Saxons fierce from the Frisian Sea 
 
 Crept in the mist's grey fold, 
 
 And sudden swooped on the IMeldon green, 
 
 From old Penjacob glen, — 
 Thou and I in the lonely Caer, — 
 
 'So hope or help from men ! 
 
 At calm upraising of thy hand. 
 And far gleam of tliine eye. 
 
 The rainbow rose round that any Caer 
 In sacred majesty. 
 
 And Ave two forms within its rim 
 Shone god-like on the gaze, 
 
 And every sieging eye was held 
 In wild and weird amaze ! 
 
MERLIN. 21 
 
 So arched in splendour Meldon's top, 
 
 Our blinded foes dismayed, 
 Paled, fled before the Power of Heaven 
 
 In its awesome robe arrayed. 
 
 Now turn thee from the tempter's thrall, 
 
 Dream of one bygone day, — 
 The flickering shade o'er the woodland glade 
 
 AYlien thou and I were at play, — 
 
 And thou touched thy harp to a gentle tune 
 
 Of happy melody ; 
 The deer stood charmed ; the golden leaves 
 
 Dropped from the quivering tree. 
 
 Oh, brother ! take that harp once more, 
 
 All-thriUing to the gleams 
 That pass now o'er the mountain's brow, 
 
 'Mid the music of the streams : 
 
22 MERLIN. 
 
 As from the heaven's height they come, 
 Bright messengers to earth r 
 
 Ethereal love doth shine in them, 
 They speak a god-like hirth. 
 
 And high they bear our human heart 
 O'er grief, and fear, and pain : 
 
 Ah, l^rother ! shall thy harp resound 
 No more in holy strain ! 
 
 Merlin. 
 
 My heart is dust, 
 And callous is the soul that once was thrilled 
 By every pure and gentle thing of earth ; 
 No more for me is blessing or to bless, — 
 Mine, — the power that smites, but cannot save ; 
 Mine, — dreaded memory that wakes to hate ; 
 Mine, — vision more than man's that can foresee 
 The future of my race, and what befalls 
 Of fateful contest and of storied deed. 
 
MERLIN. 23 
 
 Ghosts of the mountain mutter in mine ear ; 
 Sea-birds, sky-bome, aye clang it on my brain,— 
 The Bard dishonoured, worthless Priest extolled, 
 The kingless Cymri trampled on the plain. 
 Blood-spilling from the sea to shoreless land, 
 Their Caers all desolate on the windy hills, 
 Haunted by wailing spuits of the dead, — 
 This powerless I behold in my despair. 
 Once I could bend each sprite to subtle art, 
 And I could sport with aU their fiendish power. 
 And sway it to mine end, but now,— so ripe 
 In me the habit of the evil will,— 
 Each mocks my fainting purpose after good, 
 And I, proud master once, am now the slave ! 
 
 GwENDYDD {takes Merlin's liarp and sings). 
 
 Fresh as of old the breeze of the morn, 
 
 Plaintive the notes that float 
 O'er the moor with the sunny thjone, 
 
 And the blue forget-me-not. 
 
24 MERLIN. 
 
 The rock-rose lifts its face to the sun, 
 It droops when its lord is set ; 
 
 The tornientil peers, the heather-beU glows ; 
 Sweet-eyed is the violet. 
 
 The lowly gale looks forth from the grass, 
 
 Silver-starring the brae ; 
 Th' Idsean vine holds its cup for the dew. 
 
 High where the burn-heads play, 
 
 As they flash in ripples of light, 
 Ere down they break to the glen 
 
 By green bank, red scaur, and grey rock. 
 Where the rowan shades the linn : 
 
 And the sun o'er all is moving in joy. 
 
 The strong lord of the sky ; 
 He stoops to bless the earth with his love, 
 
 Benign in his majesty. 
 
MERLIN. 25 
 
 And nought but raises its face to him, 
 
 Both herb and flower of earth ; 
 He, lord of all, that rules in heaven, 
 
 Hath care for the lowhest birth. 
 
 And thou art far from the face of God — 
 
 Whate'er thy craft or power — 
 Who knowest not first to bless with thy might, 
 
 As the sun in the morning hour. 
 
 Merlin. 
 
 Ah ! gentle sister, thou hast touched my heart ; 
 I live, again, in the green fields of memory, 
 A swift-winged hour of bright enchanting hope. 
 "Would I were clothed again in innocence 
 Of youth, when every breeze was life and love, 
 Each ripple of the stream a soothing sound. 
 Each sparkle leapt to joy before mine eye ; 
 Each mountain flower the darling of my heart ; 
 When, with my shield on shoulder, sword on thigh, 
 
 D 
 
26 MERLIN. 
 
 I roamed by day the wood of Caledon, 
 And in the silence of the summer night 
 Lay folded in a dreamless sleep, — the hours 
 Unvisited by ghostly forms of air. 
 E'en now the vision rises, — that fair form. 
 The sportive maid, the Gleam amid the trees. 
 Whereon the spring had spread the apple-bloom. 
 Low by the river's side, — my Hwimleian, 
 Earth's paragon of movement and of grace, 
 The jewel of this heart, a faithless guardian ! 
 Stale heart of mine ! now no dew of heaven 
 Can freshen thee, no dawn bring quickening. 
 Ah me ! the blossoms were untimely frayed, 
 Ne'er golden autumn theirs ; and yet 'twas well, 
 Hwimleian, thou didst not wed ■with devil's son ! 
 
 Hwimleian {The Gleam — Merlin's early love— 
 appearing as a glint on the Mil, sings). 
 
 The daughter of the Sun, I come. 
 His joy, his free first-born ; . 
 
MERLIN. 27 
 
 As birthright fair the gleam I wear 
 Of the golden hair of morn. 
 
 Above the earth's dark orb I soar, 
 
 Nought there eludes my ken ; 
 The wide o'erarching heaven is mine — 
 
 The Queen of hill and glen. 
 
 I smite the darkness from the cloud, 
 
 And pierce its dusky fold ; 
 I lay my hand on the dark-browed storm. 
 
 And charm it into gold. 
 
 The grey moor mists transfigured pass, 
 
 And every evil sprite 
 And power of air, that threatened earth. 
 
 Flees stricken in my sight. 
 
 Over the mottled hills I fly, 
 My brother shade with me ; 
 
28 MERLIN. 
 
 With light wing drape the peace that broods 
 O'er the moorland spaces free. 
 
 .0' night my paler robe is cast 
 
 O'er the trembling waters clear ; 
 
 I peer into depths of the silent glen, 
 The lonely herdsman's cheer. 
 
 The brow of pain I touch with joy ; 
 
 My face — my power unfurled, 
 Dark spirits coAvering pass away — 
 
 Mine homage of the world ! 
 
 Merlin. 
 
 Ah me ! this voice once more — this voice to me — 
 
 The faithless to the truest love on earth ! 
 
 She has conquered death, and calls from th' unseen 
 
 To me, dim groper after truth and power, 
 
 Yet missing bliss ! man mocked and satisfied 
 
 With outward show and sensual pageantry. 
 
MERLIN. 29 
 
 The outer seeming, not the truth itself, 
 Has been my portion; husk, not fruit, was mine,— 
 The trick of art which awes, destroys, but builds 
 Not for the world : when it hath passed, remain 
 The waste of ashes, cowering dread, despair, 
 The glare of power that briefly flames in space, 
 Its whole reward— the dazzling snare whereby 
 The spirit of the world leads captive souls 
 Whose trust is in their strength, divorced from 
 
 love. 
 And silent working, patient thought and faith, 
 That move the springs of progress and of hope- 
 Not waited on by fame or noisy talk 
 Of buzzing tongues, or clamour of the crowd — 
 Yet ia the course of ages moulding men 
 To noble likeness, life of higher grade. 
 The stream of order from th' Eternal Fount 
 Flows free and full, unmeasured in its might, 
 Unthwarted, suffering not disharmony, 
 But thrusting all our rebel strokes aside, 
 And mocking all our puny might to grasp, 
 
30 MERLIN. 
 
 And turn aside from its unerring aim. 
 
 One Will there is in heaven and on earth — 
 
 'Tis mirrored in the open-visioned soul. 
 
 Who waits the revelation only knows, 
 
 Who bows before the Power hath true control. 
 
 GWENDYDD. 
 
 The dew is on the grave that holds my son ; 
 The grass upon the mound is green where lies 
 Our Gwenddoleu. They have no ear to list 
 The twittering birds at opening of the dawn. 
 But, LaUogen, lord of lucid verse, 
 Thgu wise diviner, fearless in the fight, 
 " The fosterer of song among the streams," 
 Thy locks are hoar as when the winter lays 
 Its snowy fingers on Trahenna's brow ; 
 And thou art nearing mortal's dreaded doom, 
 And saddest to my sight will be the cairn 
 Of thine entrenchment, — there my heart will 
 yearn 
 
MERLIN. 31 
 
 For tliee in separation long and cold. 
 I pray thee, loved one, pass not from the "world 
 In mood of wrath, vengeful, unreconciled ; 
 The Priest shall bear to thee the sacred rite 
 That heals and saves. 
 
 Merlin. 
 
 Sister ! no rite shall be for me at hand 
 Of cloak-draped monk, the ally of our foes. 
 He gives, forgives, as he were Lord — purblind : 
 " May my communion be with God alone ! " 
 
 [After an interval.) 
 
 Gwendydd ! to my fountain lead me once again. 
 Then leave me, — I would see once more alone 
 The weU-eye 'mong the hiUs that has for fringe 
 The solitary fern of tender mien. 
 That bends, leaf-charmed, o'er the gleam it loves. 
 Where birk and hazel fleck with shifting shades 
 The waters, as they move in gentle rise 
 
32 MERLIN. 
 
 And fall, and pour soft music ceaselessly ; 
 Where mosses, green and brown, cling to the stones. 
 And eyes of fair forget-me-not are bright 
 With blessings for the spray that leaps to kiss 
 It by the way. There may I commune free 
 With creatures of the wild that come at eve, 
 Whose language is the depth of loving eyes, 
 Who err not from the order of the world. 
 
 Spirit of my fountain — pure, benign, 
 Whose dwelling is in depths of Nether Erd, 
 Far down, beyond the turmoil of the world, 
 Serene and sanctified, untouched by storm. 
 Or aught that can defile, — who wearest aye 
 Unstained face in trouble or m calm 
 
 Of earth or air, — I pray this evil heart 
 
 In me may pass. Now would I be at peace 
 
 With thee, Spirit, and all gentle things. 
 
 1 know mine hour is come. 
 
MERLIN. 33 
 
 EusTics (Jierdsmen find Mm at the fountain). 
 
 Lo ! Wizard Merlin, lo ! the devil's son ! 
 Destroyer of our crops, bringer fell of storms, 
 ISTor sparing herdsman in the moorland drift, 
 N'or tender lamb in bitter wind of March, — 
 Grip, bind him with the green withes from the tree 
 Blessed by the priest. Then swiftly to the stream. 
 \T1iey carry Mm to the Tweed. 
 Son of air and earth ! let water hide thee, 
 Gurgling o'er, when thou, sunk deep, art dead 
 In wheeling Debbit, — devil's pool, where dwells 
 The iron-toed, the fiend who waits thee there : 
 On earth or in the air not thine to die. 
 
 Strong Spirit of the flood ! we give to thee 
 
 The lord of all the elements of air, — 
 
 Who from the hills sent torrent through the haugh, 
 
 That strove and roared, and bore its tawny mane, 
 
 Outsweeping, merciless, in joy of wrath, — 
 
 E 
 
34 MERLIN. 
 
 To be for ever thine, ne'er more to touch 
 Our earth with wizard spell. 
 
 Merlin (^raising his head once from the current 
 ere he sinks). 
 
 One gleam upon the stream ! My Hwimleian ! 
 
 My love ! fair daughter of the sun, — thou, thou 
 
 Alone art faithful unto passing death 
 
 Of this poor feeble framework of the soid 
 
 That fears the dread unknown and yearns for 
 
 love. 
 E'en in that future baffling all our ken. 
 I am for ever consecrate to thee ! 
 What boots it aye to be, if not to be 
 With love ! — the loved and lost, the soul that 
 
 waits 
 In ever-living love ! With thee I grasp 
 Anew the golden thread of life, — to be 
 No more 'mong living men where life is not. 
 
MERLIN. 35 
 
 HwiMLEiAN {in the air over the stream). 
 
 Now hold I tliee, the spirit, free from taint 
 Of mortal flesh, and from the tempter's thrall. 
 Now we are one — one in our strength and love — 
 Ne'er one before in all that checkered world 
 Which men call earth, where passions rage and 
 
 rule, 
 And love but seems, and gilded guilt has sway ; 
 And the brute hand that understandeth not 
 Can strike the brave, the noble, and the wise — 
 God-sped, whose kingdom is where earth is not : 
 There to the best doth e'er befall the worst. 
 Base earth no longer dominates the soul ! 
 We know it now, one orb among the stars, 
 A speck upon infinity ; and far 
 Beneath our winged flight, through ether borne, 
 In pure and simple vision we shall see 
 Free beauty undefaced, the truth undimmed, 
 And purity unsullied — face to face 
 
36 MERLIN. 
 
 In that unbroken light which faintly here 
 
 Gleams through the veil, and seeks with pitying 
 
 heart 
 To win the unheeding darkness of the world ! 
 
 And seeing, we shall be what we behold. 
 Through the unwavering purpose of the soul. 
 Transfixed by glory of th' Eternal Throne, 
 Boundless as craving of the heart for bliss. 
 Here eJffort wanders not in devious ways, 
 And strength wails not its wasted energy, 
 N'or love is pain, but will and heart are one 
 In high endeavour after nobler good, 
 As life on life evolves, infinite life, 
 Th' unwearied process of th' eternal years. 
 
37 
 
 I. 
 
 A BAPTISM AT ST GOEUIAN'S CKOSS. 
 
 This Cross was erected by the late Sir John 
 
 Naesmyth of Posso and Dawyck, near the site of 
 
 the ancient church in the valley of Manor, either 
 
 founded by or dedicated to St Gordian. Sir John 
 
 was one of the few who knew and felt the power 
 
 of the story of Tweedside. Gordian seems to have 
 
 been a man of Eoman descent who embraced 
 
 Christianity, and whose name became connected 
 
 at a very early period with the upper part of 
 
 the vale of Manor. There is a cleugh on the 
 
 Kirkstead side which is known as Gordon's, but 
 
 which is unquestionably Gordian's cleugh. A St 
 
 Gordian was beheaded at Eome under Julian the 
 
 Apostate about the year 362. A St Gorgon was 
 
 martyred under Diocletian. The kirk or chapel in 
 
 Manor is variously named Gordian's and Gorgon's. 
 
 St Gordian's feast was kept on the 10th of May. 
 
38 A BAPTISM AT ST QORDIAN'S CROSS. 
 
 A little gathering of simple folks : 
 From Kirkhope, Langha', and far Manorhead, 
 Come plaided shepherds, wives in neat attire, 
 And their wee lassies, eager, sunny-haired. 
 Bring posies of fern-leaves and heather-bells. 
 Rare blooms that nestle late in nooks of glens, 
 There cherished by the Spirit of the wild, 
 To be a sweet surprise for shepherds' bairns. 
 Or autumn wanderer who haunts the moors ! 
 
 True worth and reverence are in their mien, 
 
 Their manners simple, open as the day ; 
 
 The heaven's free face has daily greeted them, 
 
 And in them dwell, although they wot it not, 
 
 The fear, the faith, the worship of the hills ! 
 
 On the green brae they group them round the cross 
 
 That marks the spot where stood an ancient church, 
 
 Far in the wild, forgotten long ago ; 
 
 Yet 'twas a fane to which the hearts of men 
 
 Had yearned of old as to a loved place 
 
 Of sepulture, — their prayer that they might lie 
 
A BAPTISM AT ST GORDIAJVS CROSS. 39 
 
 At last beneath the eastern oriel, 
 
 Where beam of morn would glint upon their grave, — 
 
 A link with heaven, and pledge of hoped-for day. 
 
 October's tide had touched the purple heath 
 With russet brown, made bracken golden-hued, 
 And on the spreading hills there rose and fell 
 In quiet wavy flow, the lint-white bent, — 
 A sunny splendour passing from the earth. 
 Then in his arms the shepherd-father raised 
 His infant for the holy rite of Christ — 
 The sweet young life now in its dawn amid 
 This pathos and this glory of decay ! 
 Oh ! we know not, sweet child, that e'er for thee 
 The bracken wiU be green, the heather bloom, 
 Or any spring bring verdure to the hills : 
 This fading scene may be the world to thee ! 
 But thou art consecrate to Him who was, 
 And is, and is to come — the abiding Life — 
 Who on a hillside long ago clothed death 
 With glory more than splendour of decay. 
 
40 A BAPTISM AT ST GORDIAITS CROSS. 
 
 Or lingering streak of summer suns now gone ; 
 Shed o'er its sombre face the gleam of life, — 
 The life that holds thee now with Him in God ! 
 
 The simple rite administered, our heads 
 
 Were bowed in prayer, and at the pastor's words 
 
 There rose the memories of those who lived 
 
 In other times, now laid beneath our feet, 
 
 In whom had been the faith, the hope that binds 
 
 All fervent men in holy brotherhood, 
 
 Through all the years past, present, and to come. 
 
 Our souls were moved, — no word was uttered ; 
 
 Only the burn, that paused not in its flow, 
 
 But came that hour with deep voice from the hills. 
 
 In harmony of solemn resonance, 
 
 Spoke to the vale the feeling in our hearts. 
 
 October 1875. 
 
41 
 
 11. 
 
 JOCKIE : 
 
 COMPANION AND FRIEND, WHO DIED OF OLD AGE, DEC. IS, 1876, 
 IN HIS EIGHTEENTH TEAR. 
 
 Cold, stiff, and dead, thou liest to-day, 
 My friend on many a pathless yvaj, 
 Up glen, o'er hill, and moorland lone : 
 No fear hadst thou, aj^e bounding on, 
 For I was there ! 
 
 On many a misty top we've been, 
 For long where nought was heard or seen, 
 Thou by my side, — thy lint-white hair. 
 To me a gladsome vision there. 
 Lighting the gloom ! 
 
 F 
 
42 JOCKIE. 
 
 By weird grey cairn on windy height, 
 Where, far away from human sight, 
 We sat an hour in storm or shine, 
 Thy wondering eyes would peer in mine, 
 In wistful gaze. 
 
 If but a crust I gave to thee. 
 How grateful Avas thy look to me ! 
 Thou ne'er didst want, yet well I knew 
 Thou wert as faithful and as true, 
 Whate'er thy lot. 
 
 One common joy, one common life. 
 We had apart from human strife ; 
 I was thy trust, and thou didst lend 
 To me the charm of single friend, 
 A blessing rare. 
 
 Wilful sometimes, as mountain-hare. 
 The source to me of heartfelt care, 
 
JOCKIE. 43 
 
 Would tempt thee to a vagrant cliase ; 
 
 Threatened, till back thou cam'st apace, 
 
 To be forgiven. 
 
 Since first we went among the heather, 
 'Tis fourteen years, and, there together, 
 Thou hast pursued thy silent thought, 
 And in my brain have fancies wrought. 
 Some marked, some lost. 
 
 But, gentle soul, I cannot say 
 That any gleam of fancy's ray 
 E'er touched me with the softening power 
 Thy love and faith, from hour to hour, 
 Aye had for me. 
 
 And now this eve thy grave is low, 
 And white beneath the Christmas snow ; 
 The silent moon gleams calm o'er thee. 
 As it shall steal one night o'er me, 
 When laid as thou. 
 
44 JOCKIE. 
 
 Thy simple faith, thy loving trust, 
 Thy kindlmg eye, — are these but dust 1 
 Cast forth as weeds to rot in earth, 
 With nothing of immortal worth 1 
 K'o ! God is just ! 
 
 Christmas Eveninrj, 1876. 
 
45 
 
 III. 
 OCTOBEE m THE SCOTTISH LOWLANDS. 
 
 The russet's o'er the heather, 
 The grace of the bracken gone ; 
 
 Sere and dim each moorland space, 
 Where the gleam of summer shone. 
 
 The mist creeps o'er the height, 
 The burn comes hoarser down 
 
 The wandering wind is wailing 
 Among the bent "sae brown." 
 
46 OCTOBER IN THE SCOTTISH LOWLANDS. 
 
 The blaelaerry leaf, blood-red, 
 Flushes the face of the brae, 
 
 As a crimson drop distilled 
 From a deed in an olden fray. 
 
 The last golden sheaves of the haugh 
 Are borne on the creaking wain ; 
 
 Another year is upgathered, 
 Ne'er to be mine again ! 
 
 The varied days may pass, 
 
 The varied times go by ! 
 Let the spirit in me grow, 
 
 Seasons may ceaseless fly ! 
 
 On the sun-bright hues of summer 
 
 May come a sober grey, 
 And the wreath on autumn's meUow crown 
 
 Have the pathos of decay. 
 
OCTOBER IN THE SCOTTISH LOWLANDS. 47 
 
 For the sunny liours I've known 
 
 No vain regrets I find, 
 If, passing, they but leave me 
 
 Fresh heart and a wider mind ! 
 
 October 1878. 
 
48 
 
 IV. 
 
 GLENHEUEIE. 
 
 Glbnheurie, or the Dark Glen, is the name of 
 the deeply cleft and rocky valley which rims from 
 near the top of Broadlaw north-eastwards in the 
 direction of the Tweed. The burn in the glen 
 joins the Herstane Burn about a mile above Her- 
 stane House. The line of the Glenheurie Burn 
 affords the most picturesque ascent of the Broad- 
 law. It may be noted that Herstane takes its 
 name from two standing-stones by the burn, and 
 is probably derived from the Icelandic hdr (masc.) 
 Jdgh, and steinn, stone. In Welsh and Cornish 7wV 
 or her means long, and we have maenhir or long 
 (standing) stone. But the Icelandic derivation, as 
 accounting for both parts of the word Herstane, is 
 preferable. 
 
' ; 
 
 GLENHEURIE. 49 
 
 In the heart of the hills, 
 Grand Glenheurie ! Dark Glen, — 
 How fitly they named thee, 
 These old Cymric men, — 
 Thine was the forest gloom 
 Wliere the sun vainly shone ; 
 Not a leafier shade 
 In thy wood, Caledon ! 
 
 l^ow the forest shaw gone, 
 Storm-swept aU the glen, 
 Only rowan and birk 
 Here and there ye may ken ; 
 J^ot a copse for the lurking deer, 
 !N"ot a shieling for man ; 
 But a stern mountain-wall, 
 And, high as we scan. 
 The scant heather clings 
 To the screes in its fold. 
 And down in thy depths 
 Lies an awe as of old. 
 
 G 
 
50 GLENHEURIE. 
 
 Down the vast mountain-cleftj 
 Deep, secret, and deme, — 
 From the sky-line afar, 
 In the misty heights born, 
 Foaming thy waters leap 
 From rock into linn ; 
 But thine ear, Glenheurie, 
 Lists the voice in its din, 
 And dear to thy lone heart. 
 As the echoes rebound. 
 Is the Spirit that moves 
 In the wild rushing sound. 
 
 Grand Glenheurie ! Dark Glen, 
 It is well to be here. 
 And to brood in thy wilds 
 With the spirit of Fear ! 
 With thee dwells the lonely. 
 E'en the old forest grace. 
 The wild birds that haunt thee, 
 The last left of their race. 
 
GLENHEURIE. 61 
 
 Falcon, eagle are gone, 
 Yet a raven's sole brood 
 Seeks a meet resting-place 
 In thy stern solitude. 
 Oh ! ruthless the hand, bird. 
 And cursed be the sport, 
 That holds not for holy 
 Thy last place of resort ! 
 
 High here in the wilds 
 One green Eowan abides. 
 All defiant of storm, 
 Fierce time and its tides : 
 Forest chieftain he is, 
 In liis state and his glory, 
 Old as long centuries. 
 And grim as their story. 
 
 A chieftain forsaken, 
 Subjects, rivals, all gone : 
 
52 GLENHEURIE. 
 
 Yet a true lord lie rests, 
 With a grace of liis own ! 
 Great-toled and outspreading, 
 Limb-scarred in the strife, 
 Firm-nerved through the years 
 In the battle for life, — 
 Thy Eowan, Glenheurie, 
 Has the strength of the free, 
 Eock-throned at thy head, 
 As thy monarch should be ! 
 
 Tree ! the tales thou couldst tell 
 Of the years that are gone, — 
 The huntings, the night-raids, 
 Wlien clear the moon shone. 
 Of Hawkshaw and Powmood, 
 Fruid and Stanhope, Cardon, 
 Drummekier and Dawyck, 
 Each a stalwart baron, — 
 How they followed the deer 
 
GLENHEURIE. 53 
 
 In the good olden day, 
 How fleet in the chase, 
 And how prompt in the fray ! 
 
 Ay ! Drummelzier and Dawyck 
 May have sat in thy hield, 
 Speaking sad words together 
 Of sad Flodden field. 
 How they saw the king's face 
 As he passed 'mid the stour, 
 Knowing not if he lived. 
 Or met death in that hour ! 
 May have spoke of a youth 
 Brave and keen in the van, 
 "Whose troth was to heal 
 The old feuds of the clan. 
 His still form by the TiD, 
 As the gloamin' drew on, — 
 Gone the hope of his house, 
 Dead the heart he had won. 
 
54 GLENHEVRIE. 
 
 This old life now is past, — 
 Here thy Eowan abides, 
 E'en with whitest of bloom 
 Still greets the spring-tides ; 
 As the bridal guests saAv it 
 When they rode to Powmood, 
 And they spoke of young Bertha, 
 Sweet flower of the wood, — 
 Shows its berries deep-red, 
 As on that autumn day, 
 When, blood-red, the hands 
 Put the fair bride away. 
 
 Dark, haunted Glenheurie, 
 All my heart is with thee, 
 And the hoar face of eld 
 On thy brave Rowan-tree ! 
 
 July 5, 1878. 
 
55 
 
 V. 
 
 A PICTUEE AT GLOMIIN'. 
 
 The solitary way I love, 
 
 When gloamin' darkens o'er, 
 
 And but my own footfall I hear, 
 'Mid shapes and shadows hoar, 
 
 The dusty road, a long white line, 
 The fir-woods round me dim. 
 
 Through spaces of the moorland dun 
 One cottage sends a gleam. 
 
56 A PICTURE AT GLOAMIN". 
 
 The going burn grows grey and wan, 
 
 And pours a deeper sound, 
 And in the darkening air o'erhead 
 
 Are strange cries round and round. 
 
 When, lo ! upshoots the eastern moon, 
 
 Silvers the birken tree, 
 Then streaks my path with gleam and shade, 
 
 'Mid the spreading moorland free. 
 
 October 1878. 
 
57 
 
 VI. 
 THE VOICE OF THE DANISH BOY. 
 
 A TRADITION OF THE BORDER HILLS. 
 
 The sun is passing behind the hill, 
 
 The eventide falls soft and still, 
 
 And down the glen from the western steep 
 
 The shadow moves in a dream-like sleep. 
 
 Peace there is for each farm and tower. 
 
 And the bliss and the rest of the gloamin' hour. 
 
 Around the vale on each wavy height 
 There streams the glow of a meUow light. 
 The farewell boon of the parting sun 
 To the hills that watch till his race is run. 
 
 H 
 
58 THE VOICE OF THE DANISH BOY. 
 
 But list ! A strange deep-passioned tone 
 Is borne from the height that light shines on, 
 As of harp-strings touched with a gentle hand, 
 And the voice as of song of a foreign land. 
 
 E'ot loud or strained is the mingled note, 
 
 Only loving ear can hear it float ; 
 
 It breaks not the calm of eve profound, 
 
 How gentle, yet deep, is that mountain sound ! 
 
 !N'ow it thrills in hope, then it faUs in pain, 
 
 Eises and thriUs and falls again. 
 
 As if passion had sunk to soft regret 
 
 O'er its fruitless day of strife with fate. 
 
 And empire held and the pride of power 
 
 Were a mournful dream of the evening hour. 
 
 From the hill there came a shepherd fair, — 
 " Had he heard the voice in the silent air ? " 
 " Yes ! " was his answer, — '• I know it well ; 
 Oft in the evening I hear it swell. 
 
THE VOICE OF THE DANISH BOY. 59 
 
 When the stillness comes in the summer night, 
 
 And the far hill-tops are aglow with light. 
 
 'Tis suddenly born, 'tis speedily dead ; 
 
 As the gleam that glows on the mountain's head, 
 
 So suddenly comes and speedily goes 
 
 This strange weird song at the evening's close. 
 
 It dies with the light in a softening strain, 
 
 Till in the quiet eve it wakes again — 
 
 The plaint that follows the note of joy — 
 
 And I know 'tis the voice of ' the Danish Boy,' 
 
 Who sits a brief space on that green grave-mound. 
 
 Where say they his forebears' bones are found." 
 
 Sweet burst of regret for the olden time. 
 When hope was high and life in its prime, — 
 The theme is old, the strain ever young, 
 Nor heard alone in a foreign tongue. 
 From many a heart in this life of ours 
 There comes a like strain in the evening hours, — 
 A thrill from hope perished, and effort unblessed. 
 When our day is o'er, and our sun's in the west ! 
 
60 
 
 VII. 
 THE CLOUDBERRY. 
 
 Nay, touch it not ; 'tis the cloudberry bloom, 
 My friend, you and I have found, 
 
 On this far height, 'raid the soft June winds, 
 Pale- white on the mossy ground. 
 
 Ah ! rarely 'tis seen by the eye of man ; 
 
 By us let it be not soiled : 
 The spirits linger long on the mists of the morn. 
 
 To watch it ope on the wild. 
 
TEE CLOUDBERRY. 61 
 
 Up the hill we have climbed by dyke and burn, 
 The heather was breaking in green, 
 
 The blaeberry flower was red on the brae, — 
 Now we kneel to the Mountain Queen ! 
 
 High 'neath the clouds thou bloomest alone, — 
 Last flower of the moorland free — 
 
 Thy homage the circling peewit's cry, 
 And the hum of the mountain-bee ! 
 
 N'o blacker waste have the heights than thine, 
 
 White star of the mossy lea ! 
 Face-turned to the dew and the light of morn. 
 
 Thou winnest thy purity ! 
 
 Bloom fairer than thine I ne'er have seen 
 
 In dale or on hill I've climbed, 
 And ne'er have I known a darker birth 
 
 By the power of Heaven sublimed ! 
 
 June 1879. 
 
62 
 
 VIII. 
 
 ANDEEW HISLOP— MARTYR 
 
 About a mile to the north of the parish church in 
 Eskdalemuir, and not far from the river, stands a 
 solitary tombstone on the green hillside. It bears 
 the following inscription : " Andrew Hislop, Mar- 
 tyr, shot dead upon this place by Sir James John- 
 ston of Westerhall and John Graham of Claver- 
 house, May 12, 1685." Hislop was a young 
 shepherd living with his mother near this spot. 
 They had given shelter for the night to a fugitive 
 Covenanter. The atrocity of the circumstances 
 attending this murder is not overdrawn in the 
 poem. 
 
ANDREW HISLOP— MARTYR. 63 
 
 Andrew Hislop ! shepherd lad, 
 " Martyr " graven on your tomb ; 
 
 Here you met the brutal Clavers, 
 
 Here you bore his murderous doom — 
 
 Coming from the hill that mom, 
 Doing humble duty well ; 
 
 Free in step, your honest look 
 Born of sunlight on the fell — 
 
 Here, — the Eskdale mountains round you. 
 In your ear the murmuring stream ; 
 
 Here, — 'tis May, the bleatmg lambs ; 
 Life but seems a peaceful dream. 
 
 K"o weapon have you but the crook. 
 Your soft helpless flock to guide ; 
 
 Here they shot you, shepherd lad. 
 
 Here you poured your warm heart-tide. 
 
64 ANDREW HISLOP— MARTYR. 
 
 "Ere I pass into tlie Presence, 
 May I make a prayer to God ? " 
 
 " E'ot 'one word," said brutal Clavers ; 
 " Kneel to ns, you rebel clod ! 
 
 " Draw your bonnet o'er your eyes, 
 That is boon enough for thee. " 
 
 " My God I meet with open face — 
 AVhom you will hardly dare to see." 
 
 Westerhall and Claverhouse — 
 
 Turn now since the deed is done ! 
 
 What care ye for rebel corpse 1 
 Let it bleach beneath the sun. 
 
 So they left you, martyr brave, — 
 Left you on the reddened sod ; 
 
 But no raven touched your face, — 
 On it lay the peace of God ! 
 
ANDREW HISLOP— MARTYR. 65 
 
 On the moor the widow-mother 
 
 Bows to lot of dule and pine, 
 And Westerhall and Claverhouse 
 
 Have merrily rode back to dine ! 
 
 Jvly 1880. 
 
66 
 
 IX. 
 
 THE EETUEN OF SPEING. 
 
 Oh ! long beneatli the wintry blast 
 Has cowered the Angel of Spring ; 
 
 'Mid showers and sunshine at last 
 She has risen on timorous wing. 
 
 The birch she has gracefully tressed, 
 The larch tipped with delicate green, 
 
 The fresh hues of the spruce has set 
 The dark mantled firs between. 
 
THE RETURN OF SPRING. 67 
 
 Low-sweet is her voice in the vale, 
 ^Vhere the water is singing free, 
 
 And the trout sun-circles are making 
 On the pool in their heart of glee. 
 
 The linnet a love-call it pipes 
 To its mate from a leafy bower ; 
 
 And the bumble-bee is burrowing 
 'Mid its music in the flower. 
 
 The yellow violet peers on the hill, — 
 Eye of love for the spring's new green ; 
 
 And each meadow-runnel is blessed 
 With the milk-eyed cardamine. 
 
 From the grave ariseth the soul 
 Of a new and trustful life. 
 
 In calm of faith, — as if ne'er despair 
 Had ruled 'mid the winter's strife. 
 
68 THE RETURN OF SPRING. 
 
 Blessed Angel of spring, to me 
 
 Thou'rt bringer of joy and tears, — 
 
 A bright-winged and dreamful thought. 
 To weaken my doubts and fears. 
 
 June 8, 1878. 
 
69 
 
 OCTOBEE. 
 
 The glory is gone, 
 
 The purple, the sheen, 
 The deep heather-bloom, 
 
 The spaces of green. 
 
 The moorland is clad 
 
 Li the buff and the brown, 
 The brackens dishevelled, 
 
 The bent bowing down. 
 
70 OCTOBER. 
 
 Your brightness too brief, 
 Ye moorlands and fells ; 
 
 Fades the green that bedecks 
 Your burn-heads and wells. 
 
 Soft the wind soughed 
 
 In the glad summer time ; 
 
 Pensive the hiU-face, 
 
 Now mourning its prime. 
 
 Pass all our best joys, 
 
 Short-lived in their hour, 
 
 As the one splendid glimpse 
 In a sweet summer shower. 
 
 October 1880. 
 
71 
 
 XL 
 A PASSING SCENE ON THE HILLS. 
 
 AUGUST 2, 1881. 
 
 This day 
 A gentle and a balmy south-west wind, 
 From ocean far, upbrings grey woven clouds 
 That softly veil the sun ; their spreading skirts 
 Close o'er the sky-line of the circling hills. 
 Suddenly one vale, beneath the sombre heavens, 
 Is lit from haugh to height in radiance 
 From the unseen. The rude moor brightens with 
 A fervid joy, as of an angel's kiss 
 Impressed upon the brow of one that wakes 
 To rapture in a shimmering land of dreams,— 
 The home of happy fleeting phantasy. 
 
72 
 
 XII. 
 
 3n /Iftcmoriam. 
 
 JOHN BEOWI^, M.D. 
 
 The yellow violet on the hill 
 
 Came forth to-day in tenderest mien 
 
 A month before its earliest time, 
 
 And up my heart leapt full, I ween. 
 
 But sudden rose a saddening thought, 
 That quick repressed the impulse meet, 
 
 For I had learned, an hour before, 
 Thy noble heart had ceased to beat. 
 
JOHN BROWN. 73 
 
 The violet comes from out the death 
 Of winter, when thy tender eyes, 
 
 That would have watched it with all love, 
 Are closed to every glad surprise. 
 
 Thou, Scotland's son by birth and blood, 
 The heir of all she loves, reveres ; 
 
 Her pith of sense, her power of worth, 
 Her humour, pathos, pitying tears. 
 
 ]S"o borrowed strain, no trick of art — 
 The home-grown theme thine offering ; 
 
 Anie and Eab, Pet Marjory, 
 
 And Minchmuir with its haunted spring. 
 
 Thy life a fount of simple joys, 
 A sum of duties nobly done ; 
 
 The meed of love, the memory dear 
 In human hearts for ever won. 
 
 K 
 
74 JOHN BROWN. 
 
 Yet not unclouded was thy sky ; 
 
 Some hours of doubt and dark were thine, 
 Ere brighter grew thy close of day, 
 
 The splendour of a sun's decline. 
 
 Thou truest friend, thou warmest heart, 
 "Where art thou now % my spirit cries. 
 
 "Within the veil I see thee stand. 
 
 And round thee are the pure and wise. 
 
 The brow, the face we loved on earth, 
 
 These, these are thine ; what nobler guise % 
 
 The crown above thy silver locks, 
 And radiant o'er thy gentle eyes ! 
 
 May 12, 1882. 
 
75 
 
 XIII. 
 MY OWIST FAMILIAR HILLS. 
 
 Your charm abideth ever, 
 
 My own familiar hills ; 
 Let Sim or storm enwrap yon, 
 
 My heart with passion fiUs. 
 
 Though yours no Alpine grandeur 
 To thrill the sensuous eye, 
 
 A hand unseen, slow-working, 
 Through ages long gone by, 
 
76 Ml' OWN FA MILIAR HIZLS. 
 
 In wavy lines hath shaped you, 
 Far-spreading, silent, free ; 
 
 O'er an earth-ocean moveless 
 The eye goes ceaselessly. 
 
 Your ujjlands have a music 
 
 In the depths of summer calm ; 
 
 Your noonday voices fusing 
 In one low heavenward psalm. 
 
 0' night, your broad brows shimmer 
 In the white and weird moontide ; 
 
 In your glens far doAvn and awesome 
 Dim haunting shapes abide. 
 
 Oft on the morn of winter 
 
 I've seen your grey crags stand, 
 
 White-crowned in snowy radiance, 
 The joy of all the land. 
 
MY OWJV FAMILIAR HILLS. 77 
 
 In June you gracious greet me, 
 
 With the rock-rose, meek and still ; 
 
 The yellow violet smiles to me. 
 And the fairy tormentil. 
 
 In August glows the heather. 
 And gleams the bracken green ; 
 
 The milk-wort lifts its gentle face. 
 The grassy tufts between. 
 
 October spreads its spaces. 
 High o'er the moorland free. 
 
 Of lint- white bent in ripples, 
 A breezy golden sea. 
 
 Wlien o'er you clouds are rushing, 
 I'm borne on fancy's wing ; 
 
 Pass high in air old riders, 
 I list their bridles ring. 
 
78 MY OWN FAMILIAR HILLS. 
 
 And then the heavens will open, — 
 The free fair face of noon ; 
 
 Awhile I rest in blest dreamland, 
 As I hear the burn-heads croon. 
 
 Ye bright and gladsome burnies, 
 That leap and flash and gleam, 
 
 Where the bonnie birk is drooping, 
 And the rowan shades the stream,- 
 
 Ye make the rarest music. 
 The rocks are earless, grey ; 
 
 In fulness of your own sweet heart 
 Aye singing by the way, — 
 
 The voice of one that heeds not 
 
 Our earthly sympathy ; 
 Still hymning to the Love Unseen 
 
 A lyric true and free. 
 
MY OWJSr FAMILIAR HILLS. 79 
 
 Ye solitary uplands, 
 
 "WTiom rarely foot hath trod, 
 Known but to one who loves you, 
 
 And the open eye of God, 
 
 In saddest mood ye've found me, 
 Thought dark as of the tomb, — 
 
 The sun-glints glancing o'er you 
 Have scattered aU my gloom. 
 
 I've seen in skyey spaces 
 Looks not of earth or time, 
 
 And forms of shadowy niountaias, 
 In another far-off clime. 
 
 And then the mist would wrap me 
 In many a mazy fold, — 
 
 The spectre shapes around me. 
 From the dim dreamland of old 
 
80 MY OWaV familiar HILLS. 
 
 They rise, they flit before me, 
 
 In silent airy tread ; 
 In the speeding forms and speechless, 
 
 I know historic dead. 
 
 A strange hushed life deep buried 
 
 Ye keep -within your breast, 
 The stain of ancient story, 
 The spirit of unrest ; 
 
 The grace of knightly presence, 
 
 The faith of lovers' vow ; 
 A tenderness of hearts long quenched. 
 
 Ye bear the memory now. 
 
 In that still sheen of moonlight 
 I see their track, their tread : 
 
 Behind them in the valley 
 The seven brothers dead. 
 
3ir OWN FAMILIAR HILLS. 81 
 
 I see him stoop, drink faintly, 
 
 Beside the water wan ; 
 The purple stain ; the maiden. 
 
 She fears a dymg man. 
 
 This old life gone for ever, 
 A void and airy dream ; 
 
 The forms of all the legends, 
 But shadows on the stream ! 
 
 No ! not whUe heart can feel it, 
 Or bosom heave a sigh ; 
 
 There is a living presence 
 For every living eye. 
 
 Ye give me thoughts all holy. 
 Ye knit me to the strong ; 
 Ye nerve the will for duty, 
 ^ And stir the heart to song. 
 
82 MY OWN FAMILIAR HILLS. 
 
 Let fickle fame go by me, 
 Mean forms of eartlily good, 
 
 If God my mountains leave me, 
 And my mountain solitude. 
 
 July 1882. 
 
83 
 
 XIV. 
 
 ' A hasty jest I once let fall — 
 As jests are wont to be, untrue— 
 As if the sum of joy to you 
 Were hunt and picnic, rout and ball." 
 
 — C. KiNGSLEY. 
 
 TO 
 
 It was a ligMsome word I spoke, 
 E"ot knowing in a perfect way 
 
 The being of your inner heart, 
 
 The varying powers there holding sway. 
 
84 TO . 
 
 I said you were on pleasure bent — 
 The dance, the theatre, and the pride 
 
 Of life, and pompous circumstance, 
 "With gilded glory for your guide. 
 
 I knew you winced, and secret said : 
 " Is this the whole of life to me ? " 
 
 Doubtless I touched but half the truth, 
 Yet half the truth may make one free ! 
 
 When dallying with the lower self. 
 Perhaps 'tis well to have it said — 
 
 " This, this is you," for thenceforth springs 
 The thought that quickens heart and head ; 
 
 And makes us feel how very near 
 "We are to edge of the abyss ; 
 
 How very near the glory waits, 
 "Which only for a word we miss. 
 
TO . 85 
 
 The swallow from a sunny clime 
 
 Dips strange upon the darkened mere, 
 
 Then sudden rises high on wing 
 Into the genial sunshine clear. 
 
 So you have touched the chilling wave, 
 And found it not as once you thought ; 
 
 Then sudden with a lofty flight 
 Into a higher clime are brought. 
 
 Dear Friend ! ne'er let your drooping wing 
 
 Into the lower current fall. 
 But rise upon the glorious gleam — 
 
 This is your Father-God's recall ! 
 
 Christmas Eve, 1882. 
 
XV. 
 
 THE CYMRIC T0W:N-. 
 
 The remains of the dwellings or hill-forts of the 
 ancient Cymri are numerous on the hills of the 
 Scottish Lowlands, especially in the central or more 
 mountainous district, including the valleys of Eddie- 
 stone, Lyne, Manor, Tweed, Yarrow, Ettrick, and 
 Teviot. They are chiefly to be found on the 
 lower hills, of an elevation from 800 to 1600 
 feet or thereby. They consist generally of a 
 rounded space or area, encu-cled by a ditch 
 and mound. Sometimes they show more than 
 one surrounding trench and embankment, either 
 
THE CYMRIC TOWN. 8Y 
 
 partial or complete. The inner area usually con- 
 tains remains that may be regarded as those of 
 dwellings, probably wattled. Time and other 
 agencies have done much to efface the original 
 lineaments, but very good examples of what 
 these fort-dwellings must have been at first still 
 survive, especially in the valleys of Eddlestone and 
 Manor. Caer was the original designation, and it 
 is now frequently to be met with in names of 
 places. 
 
 'Tis the place of the Cymric town. 
 
 On the high and airy hiU ; 
 The green o'er its ruined mounds, 
 
 Its once living voices still. 
 
 Shapeless the homes where they hved, 
 Shapless the cairns of their dead ; 
 
 Sim-God ! ye gleam as of yore, 
 
 But ye thrill not the mouldering head ! 
 
88 THE CYMRIC TOWN. 
 
 The bee hums low in the heather, 
 The old tune the waters keep ; 
 
 But nerveless the eager ear, 
 
 ^Nought breaks on that dreamless sleep. 
 
 And fair lies the land they loved, 
 Around their old wattled home ; 
 
 Hill and moor and boundless sky, 
 Far spread as the eye can roam. 
 
 Sweet music flows in each name 
 They gave to the wavy hiU, 
 
 The haugh and the gleaming stream, 
 And the rushing moimtain-rill. 
 
 Garlet, Garlavan, Caerdon, 
 
 Ye speak of their ancient time ; 
 
 Penvenna, Trahenna, Traquair, 
 Ye fall with a mystic chime. 
 
THE CYMRIC TOWX. 89 
 
 Theirs Talla, Manor, and Fruid, 
 Drummelzier foaming in speed ; 
 
 And streams to be famous in story — 
 Yarrow, Teviot, and Tweed. 
 
 The height and the might of the hill, 
 The depth of the misty glen, 
 
 The roaring wind and the flood, 
 "Were dear to the Cymric men. 
 
 And one great Power was in all — 
 The spirit of shade and gleam. 
 
 That made his peace with the eve. 
 And woke in the morning beam. 
 
 Now in forest gloom enwrapt, 
 
 Dim fear to the heart he brings ; 
 
 Then sweet with the bird out-speaks, 
 In each note that joyous rings. 
 
90 THE CYMRIC TOWN. 
 
 By the Caer are the ancient graves 
 On this high and airy height ; 
 
 No lowlier tomb for the Cymri 
 
 Than the eagle sweeps in his flight. 
 
 ISTow meet falls the evening's peace ; 
 
 A lone clear star is on high ; 
 In ghostly line the white sheep pass 
 
 Up the hill 'neath the gloamin' sky. 
 
91 
 
 XVI. 
 
 5n ^emoriam, 
 EEV. JAMES EUSSELL, D.D., YAREOW. 
 
 A MORN of mist and weeping rain, 
 
 As well befits our sorrow, 
 Hangs o'er thy vale, and o'er thy stream ; 
 Thou wrievest — rueful Yarrow ! 
 
 The courtly grace, the kindly face. 
 Thou keepest not his marrow ; 
 
 A quiet, self-sufficing life 
 
 He lived by thee, Yarrow ! 
 
92 REV. JAMES RUSSELL, D.D., YARROW. 
 
 Of restless aim or fickle fame 
 ISo comfort would he borrow ; 
 
 But he would live the people's friend, 
 And be thy lover, Yarrow ! 
 
 By deed of blood, by hopeless love. 
 Thou every heart canst harrow ; 
 
 Thy spirit in our gentle friend 
 "Was purified, Yarrow ! 
 
 The strife of life he heeded not, 
 His joy to heal the sorrow 
 
 That fell upon each humble heart, 
 By thy clear wave, Yarrow ! 
 
 On every hill, in every glen, 
 
 To meet him was good morrow ; 
 
 Now blithesome lark may o'er him trill 
 On thy dowie houms, Yarrow ! 
 
REV. JAMES RUSSELL, D.D., YARROW. 93 
 
 I've seen thee oft at winter tide, 
 
 But ne'er so sad beforrow ; 
 ISTe'er fern so sere, nor bent so wan, 
 
 'Nov birk so bare in Yarrow ! 
 
 The pastor and the friend is gone ; 
 
 Be his a brighter morrow 
 Than ever dawned upon thy vale, 
 
 Even thine ! winsome Yarrow ! 
 
 January 12, 1883. 
 
94 
 
 XVII. 
 
 THE SYCAMOEE BEFORE MY WINDOW. 
 
 APRIL 7, 1883. 
 
 My sycamore ! my precious tree ! 
 
 I've watched you through the years arise, 
 A sapling growing free and fair, 
 
 And now full-formed in noble guise ! 
 
 A favoured nursling of the soil, 
 
 Through sun and dew, and raua and storm, 
 'Mid powers conflicting you have reared. 
 
 By higher power, harmonious form. 
 
THE SYCAMORE BEFORE MY WINDOW. 95 
 
 Not turned aside by any gleam, 
 
 Througli witchery of the wooing sim, 
 
 Not warped by tempest in its swing — 
 Your steadfast purpose kept and won. 
 
 This hour you stand before me bare, 
 In symmetry of bole and plan ; 
 
 Hid at your root the spirit works, 
 As fresh as when the world began. 
 
 One common life you have in all, 
 
 In root and branch each other's good , 
 
 And every careless bough is twined 
 In sympathy of brotherhood. 
 
 ISTow with the eve the sun hath set 
 In golden bars your leafless frame, 
 
 And through the tracery of your boughs 
 The hni slows in cathedral flame. 
 
96 THE SYCAMORE BEFORE MY WINDOW. 
 
 An oriel 'gainst the southern sky, 
 A hundred scenes you give for one ; 
 
 Each checkered pane hath its own heaven, 
 Yet severs not th' infinite throne. 
 
 When summer clothes you green in leaf, 
 'Tis then you have a merry tide, 
 
 Play with the kisses of the sun. 
 And feel a joy you cannot hide. 
 
 And as I curious gaze on space. 
 You nod to me and I to you, 
 
 And back you call my wandering thought 
 With a familiar touch and true. 
 
 The figure always 'gainst the void. 
 To me more than a human friend. 
 
 Why should I roam the world wide, 
 While you have grace and joy to lend 1 
 
THE SYCAMORE BEFORE MY WINDOW. 97 
 
 Five riders for yoiir tops you show, 
 And seldom rest they, foul or fair ; 
 
 With helmets on, they jocund spur, 
 A merry lot, and high in air. 
 
 As with the wind they ride and ride, 
 I wonder what they would be at, 
 
 For on they go and back they swing, 
 And ne'er progress a single whit. 
 
 In air they beat against the sky ; 
 
 On earth we strive a similar round. 
 Each finds the limit of his fate ; 
 
 'Tis ours to know that we are bound ! 
 
98 
 
 XVIII. 
 THE HUNDLESHOPES. 
 
 Heights sootlied and lapt in calm 
 This heaven's holy day ; o'er your broad brows 
 The sky-dropt shadows pass one after one, 
 Self-woven in a dream that hovers o'er 
 Your silent face, and gently steals its way : 
 The Spirit pure that dwells with you, grave hills, 
 Well pleased to be, in such a sovereign hour 
 Of bliss, the partner of the love of heaven, 
 Li deep abandonment to holy joy. 
 Let shadow darken, or let gleam illume. 
 Ye have no question, but are well content 
 To wait the opening of the mystery. 
 
 Sunday, July 29, 1883. 
 
99 
 
 XIX. 
 
 A EEMINISCENCE. 
 
 An eager boy, yet of despairful heart, 
 
 As with the bright noon I set forth to scale 
 
 The sky-concealing height, that rose beyond 
 
 The red burn-heads ; methought I then should find 
 
 And know the mystery — the One who is 
 
 The fount of all ; and thus I strove far up 
 
 The lonely glen, 'mid screes and panting braes 
 
 Of green, still pressing on for Him above, 
 
 If haply I might find Him face to face, 
 
 In free communion : but I found Him not, — 
 
 Only the moor's silence, and th' infinitude 
 
 Around me, draped in clear-grey realms of sky, 
 
100 A REMINISCENCE. 
 
 Wliere might reign the nameless One whom men 
 
 call God ; 
 Not here the vision, but the gleam that hints 
 And keeps the hope of Him in heart and soul. 
 And now that I have climbed well up life's height, 
 By Sense I find Him not, but in the Faith 
 Which, struggling, strives and holds, He beckoning 
 
 me 
 As by departing sign, — I with dim sight 
 Following lowly where His steps have been. 
 
 July 1883. 
 
101 
 
 XX. 
 
 MY EEPLY TO THE SHEPHEED. 
 
 " Why do you go where no man goes 
 
 Among the uplands wild 1 
 Are you a man who's stem at heart, — 
 
 Your eyes, methinks, are mild 1 " 
 
 Thus to me spoke a shepherd grey, 
 With upturned wondering gaze ; 
 
 And thus to him I made reply 
 About my wayward ways : — 
 
102 MY REPLY TO THE SHEPHERD. 
 
 " In inmost soul I'd be alone, 
 Beyond your farthest beat, 
 
 Beyond the valleys where the lambs 
 In June together bleat — 
 
 " Beyond tlie spring-fringed birks I'd pierce 
 
 To upland bleak and bare, 
 Where's but a tinge of green between 
 
 The heather dark and rare. 
 
 "There no man comes, and but the whaup, 
 
 With solitary voice, 
 Flies o'er my head with rapid wing, — 
 
 This, this is my heart's choice. 
 
 " But take it not I scorn my kind, 
 Or gentle things that dwell 
 
 By lowland haugh and lowland stream. 
 For I do love them weU. 
 
MY REPLY TO THE SHEPHERD. 103 
 
 " Yet in my heart there is a void 
 
 Which all these may not fill ; 
 They give no calm, no doubt resolve, 
 
 N'or hold the restless will. 
 
 "Th' unpeopled voiceless solitude^ 
 Which compasses me round, 
 
 Is open vision of a sphere 
 I cannot mete with bound. 
 
 " Out to the great immensity 
 
 I pierce with restless gaze, 
 And Sense and Thought sink overcome, 
 
 With heart in weird amaze. 
 
 " Here closer to the mystery, 
 Nearer the Living Throne,— 
 
 The same to-day and yesterday. 
 While we pass one by one. 
 
104 MF REPLY TO THE SHEPHERD. 
 
 " And thus I ponder all that is 
 In that strange word before, 
 
 And how th' infinite tide will flow 
 When I shall be no more. 
 
 " No peace, I ween, hath any soul, 
 Until it knows the mood 
 
 Of awe cast from the Eternal Power 
 In the heart of solitude. 
 
 " If tliis be not a fit reply, 
 No more than any child 
 
 Can I teU you the reason why 
 I seek the upland wild." 
 
 July 1883. 
 
105 
 
 XXI. 
 
 SMAYLHOLM TOWER 
 
 Deep-eooted on thy rock, 'mid knowes and crags 
 Untouched by hand of man, as rude and -wild 
 As when the sun first saw them green and grey. 
 And lit their straggling sombre whins with gold, — 
 Thou risest strong, a massive square-knit keep, 
 And sett'st on high thy watchful bartizan 
 O'er all the Border land, — of old, as now. 
 Its grim and solitary sentinel. 
 
 From thee keen warder watched, and eyed the moon 
 
 Eise slowly gleaming o'er the eastern sea. 
 
 While Tweed's responsive stream its reaches bared, 
 
 
 
106 SMAYLHOLM TOWER. 
 
 And through the haugh-land spread its silver links, 
 As in the shadows lay white-spotted kine. 
 
 "Westwards the fronting Eildons caught the sheen, 
 And rose far north the lonely Lammermoors 
 In misty haze ; one after one the peaks 
 Of Cheviot glimmered on his ken, and showed 
 The long far line that barred the Southron's sky. 
 
 Grey-grim thou art ! storm relic of the years, — 
 And through thy narrow boles the wind upHfts 
 Its melancholy voice, a wail for all 
 That thou hast known, and all that thou hast been. 
 The wasted bent is round thee, and bows low 
 Its tresses on the eerie Watchfold Crag 
 That Icnew the flame whereby the Lady saw 
 That dead knight's umbered face, limned as in life, 
 And yearned with love as to an earthly form, — 
 Not witting he lay in a bloody tomb. 
 
 Grey-grim and weird ! and thy wan lochan keeps 
 
SMAYLHOLM TOWER. 107 
 
 Thee fit coBipanionship ; not one dark tale 
 
 Doth it reveal, but inoveth restless aye. 
 
 As if 'twere stirred with memories of deeds 
 
 It holds within its depths, done ere dawn had come 
 
 To touch the darkness or the face of man. 
 
 Befits thee well this February morn, 
 
 As over all the hills within thy ken 
 
 The grey wide-spreading sky soft lays a calm -, 
 
 Yet sends glints sudden earthwards through the 
 
 clouds, 
 That in brief shimmer pass, one after one. 
 O'er the bared bosoms of the Cheviot heights ; 
 As if the Spirit of the Past were here, 
 With loving care for old historic spots. 
 And fain would glorify the vanished dead, 
 "With that pathetic peace from heaven that broods 
 O'er heroes' graves and ancient battle-fields. 
 
 February 16, 1884. 
 
108 
 
 XXII. 
 5n ^cmoriam. 
 WILLIAM BUENETT OF BAENS. , 
 
 DIED MARCH 5, 1884. 
 
 The representative of the ancient Tweeddale family 
 of Burnett of Barns, who held the estate for more 
 than six hundred years, from the twelfth century 
 to 1838. 
 
 'Tis gloamin' tide, and 'mid the parting clouds 
 The moon makes tender light, and shoots soft beams 
 Upon the blue-grey sky that lies along 
 The south-east hiUs, tear-laden ; in the west 
 A radiant splendour ling'ringly abides, 
 
WILLIAM BURNETT OF BARNS. 109 
 
 Where late the sun hath been ; the long, low hills 
 Against the west and north are shadowed dark 
 On that sad eastern slope where they enclose 
 A dead friend's silent face, nought witting now 
 Of splendour, shadow, or encircling care, 
 Or passing murmur of his ancient Tweed 
 Beneath the chamber, where he shrouded lies. 
 Ah ! moon, and tearful sky, and lingering light, 
 Are ye e'en aught for us, or for our dead 1 
 Or are ye but the passing callous shows 
 That know no difference in our mortal fate. 
 Mating our grief with gleam, our joy with shade 1 
 I cannot tell, but this I know somehow 
 That in my heart ye make this gloamin' more 
 Than the mere gaze of sense, as ye o'erlook 
 And canopy the form of one who lies 
 Amid his old ancestral hills, and all 
 The memories of a long-descended line, — 
 Forebears that stood with early Scottish kings. 
 That knew the Bruce, and bled at Bannockburn, 
 Saw Modden, Pinkie, and the Douglas day. 
 
no WILLIAM BURNETT OF BARNS. 
 
 And eager eyed Tweed's beckoning cresset-fires. 
 Grand old forebears, where now are ye ? A heap 
 Of shapeless dust, unfeeling, eyeless, mute ! 
 Or know ye aught of him that lies this hour 
 In death 1 Perchance there may be faces now 
 Upturned to these high stars, this open heaven, 
 Amid strange stirrings in the moonlit glens, 
 "Weird passings to and fro of shadowed forms, — 
 Where oft o' nights his strong forefathers rode. 
 And where, in this sad hour, hearts once of earth 
 Are beating in undying sympathy ; 
 And fain would gather him, one spirit more, 
 "Within the welcome of their kinship home, 
 "Where, buried all the strife of times long gone. 
 Unknown the pettiness of modern life. 
 There reigns serene immortal brotherhood. 
 
Ill 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 IN THE EHYMER'S GLE:N". 
 
 MAY 8, 1884. 
 
 Come now, Queen of Faery, 
 Come now and touch my hand ; 
 
 Dawn thou, gentle vision, 
 From the ELfin spirit-land : 
 
 Come at this hour a-Maying, 
 When the breeze is in the sky; 
 
 The joyous clouds are speeding, 
 The lark soars trilh'ng high. 
 
112 IN THE RHYMER'S GLEN. 
 
 Come now, Queen of Eaery, 
 
 With the first love-steps of spring ; 
 
 The larch holds out its tassels, 
 The birks free splendour fling. 
 
 Thy Ehymer's glen is yearning, 
 Methinks thou tarriest long, 
 
 While breeze and bird and burnie 
 Sing one expectant song. 
 
 Come now, Queen of Faery, 
 In this the young spring-tide ; 
 
 Thy glen is decked and joyous, 
 All eager for its bride, — 
 
 The bride of long-gone ages, 
 In the days of glamoury ; 
 
 As vanished star whose glory 
 Still haunts the memory. 
 
IN THE RHYMER'S GLEN. 113 
 
 Pray as I may, Vision, 
 
 Stretch hand in craving fain, 
 And gaze with yearning eye. 
 
 Thou comest not a^ain ! 
 
 The spring returns as ever 
 
 With voice of wood and stream 
 
 The sun on pool is blinking. 
 And casts its olden gleam ! 
 
 Well mayst thou hold us faithless. 
 And scorn the heart of men, 
 
 As the Ehymer's kiss none gracious, - 
 Thou comest not again ! 
 
 Thou seest us kneel to Mammon, 
 
 And the god Utility ; 
 Thou, in the unhewn temple. 
 
 Thou iNTature-spirit free. 
 
114 IN THE RHYMER'S GLEN. 
 
 How poor this earth without thee, 
 Bedeck it as we may ! 
 
 Oh give me back the vision 
 That blessed the olden day ! 
 
115 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 ST MAEY'S LOCH. 
 
 FROM RODONO, EVENING OF SEPTEMBER 5, 1884. 
 
 Thou canst not stay, dear Loch, unmoved beneath 
 
 This moon, the full-orbed eager eye that glows 
 
 Above thy southern hills, and holds thee bound 
 
 By passionate face of olden memories ; 
 
 Under the beam thou racest from the east, 
 
 In long-drawn ripples, bright from shore to shore ; 
 
 Thy deep fuU heart leaps up in joyous mood, 
 
 Free-bound in moving links of silver sheen, 
 
 The eager unconstraint of new-bom love. 
 
 O'er thee thy guardian hills bend gleaming, fused, 
 
 Faint-dimmed, in the transparent veil, where now 
 
116 ST MARTS LOCH. 
 
 In middle air the olden visions float, — 
 
 The love-lorn maiden of the Forest Kirk, 
 
 Her face whose tears bedewed the Dowie Den, 
 
 The lovers fleeing o'er the moonlit bent, 
 
 The widow wailing sore her loved slain lord, — 
 
 The dead that know not death, — assembled there 
 
 Serene and still, as is the pearly cloud 
 
 Of this night's heaven, whose calm encu'cles thee, 
 
 Thou gentle, conquering moon ! 
 
117 
 
 XXV. 
 
 ON FIEST HEAEING THE NOTE OF 
 THE CUCKOO THIS SPEING. 
 
 MAY 6, 1885. 
 
 JSTew heart and hope ! Why slioiild ye rise from 
 
 this, — 
 The simple note I heard a year ago, 
 From that same spot, — the centre of my world, — 
 The group of trees that guard the living spring, — 
 The "VVell-Bush, clasped in hollow of the hill 1 
 Note after note, thy welcome comes to me, 
 First from the year's long silence, speaking hope 
 And joy, the seer of a happier time, 
 The trusting prophet of a brighter day, — 
 
118 THE NOTE OF THE CUCKOO. 
 
 While wintry showers are striving with the sun, 
 A voice thou art from the invisible Power 
 That girds this earth and all our human life, 
 God-sent, God-sped ; yet thou, strange visitant. 
 Dost know not all the purpose of thy call, 
 The living thrill thou bearest to the heart, — 
 Thou angel-minister of the Unseen, — 
 Fraught with His hidden thought. His quickening 
 
 touch 
 Of love and ever-living sympathy. 
 
119 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 OlS" THE GLEN'RATH HEIGHTS. 
 
 AUGUST 25, 1885. 
 
 High where the great Heights enfold me, 
 'Tis here where I love most to be, 
 When the mist o'er the tops is speeding, 
 And the heart speeds on with it free. 
 
 Where the bent waves over the heather, 
 And the bracken is green on the brae, 
 And the burnie is leaping and pouring 
 Its song of young Hfe by the way. 
 
120 ON THE GLEN RATH HEIGHTS. 
 
 Looking in awe but to heaven, 
 Here would I dwell and alone, 
 Let it clothe itself in the grey cloud, 
 Claim the sun-smit height for its own. 
 
 Passing now with its face of darkness, 
 Changing then to its sunny smile, 
 The patient hills never murmuring, 
 Be it gloom or glory the while. 
 
 Hills ! ye have stood through the ages, — 
 What do all your changes mean, 
 But flickerings forth on the daylight 
 From the Power enthroned and unseen 1 
 
 Are ye waiting a fuUer out-speaking. 
 Ye Hills with your silent face 1 
 Calm on your brows may I see not 
 The look of expectant grace ! 
 
ON THE GLEN RATH HEIGHTS. 121 
 
 Come thus, Spirit, upon me, 
 
 I know not all that thou art. 
 
 But thy footprints of love and of beauty 
 
 Are the solace and joy of my heart. 
 
 Thou hast clasped the screes in the heather, 
 The purple bloom spread to the day, 
 On blaeberry leaf dropt the blood-stain, — 
 "With Thee my heart burns by the way. 
 
122 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 5n /iftemoriam. 
 
 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP. 
 
 DIED AT ORMSART, IN THE EARLY MORN OF FRIDAY 
 18th SEPTEMBER 1885. 
 
 Oh ! soul to soul, and heart to heart, 
 A brother true, in every part, 
 The light of many a life on earth, 
 Deep quickening as a second birth ! 
 And thou art gone ! my loved friend, 
 No longer hand to hand we wend ; 
 From my poor life a light is gone, — 
 The shadow where the clear eyes shone : 
 
JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP. 123 
 
 I cannot pierce that foreign strand, 
 But "where thou art, no sunless land. 
 
 Ne'er truer man or purer heart, 
 
 'Twas thine to live " the better part," 
 
 A soul untouched by worldly mood, * 
 
 Unerring in its rectitude, — 
 
 A spirit fair from Heaven sent, 
 
 To what was noble, thou wert bent ! 
 
 The simple things of mother earth, 
 
 The wayside flower, the moorland birth. 
 
 The heather spaces, high and free, 
 
 " The bent sae brown," the bracken lee. 
 
 The grey rock where the bumie breaks. 
 
 The linn-pool where the rowan makes 
 
 A shadow o'er the water's face, 
 
 The braeside with its birken grace — 
 
 These were thy joys, gentle mind, 
 
 And these I've shared with thee, my friend. 
 
124 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP. 
 
 Yet not alone the simple sight, — 
 Through these, through all, a higher light 
 For thee aye burned, pure as a flame 
 That from a hidden glory came — 
 Shone gleamitig from a Power on high, 
 Beyond the mountain, star, and sky, — 
 His was the sunlight. His the storm, 
 His mountain mist, and shadowy form, 
 His the bright beam, the darkening mood, 
 The pathos, awe, and solitude ; 
 Clearest upon the mountain brow 
 Thou saw'st the Power, God-visioned thou ! 
 
 Thy presence gone, thy work remains, 
 We bless thee, grateful for our gains, 
 For pathos, beauty, graceful art ; 
 Free nature's ways, the human heart 
 So touched that as the ages flow. 
 And higher soul shall in man grow, 
 The simpler vision, purer time. 
 Will cherish dear thy moving rhyme, 
 
JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP. 125 
 
 In Kiltnahoe's creations fair, 
 
 And "The Bush," aye green, "abune Traquair." 
 
 Oxford ! thy courts and halls he knew, 
 A son deep loving, faithful, true ; 
 From thy past drew inspiring breath. 
 And fitly wore thy laurel wreath. 
 Thy learning prized, each storied name 
 Was power to set his heart aflame ; 
 Yet truest to old Scotland's days. 
 Best loved old Scotland's ballad lays, — 
 In him full beat, without control, 
 The Scottish heart, the patriot soul. 
 
 Where breaks the blue Atlantic wave, 
 
 And sunny ripples Ormsary lave, 
 
 Where grew thy youth in ardent time, 
 
 Where rose the visions of thy prime, ' 
 
 Where Highland lore and Higland love 
 
 Were constant aye thy heart to move, — 
 
126 JOHN CAMPBELL SEAIRP. 
 
 There in the early autumn morn, 
 Thou passed to the unearthly bourne ; 
 The open stars were looking on, 
 Expectant of the coming dawn, 
 And they and thou, lost to our sight, 
 Were folded in one heavenly light. 
 
127 
 
 XXVIII. 
 ON" CADEMUIE. 
 
 OCTOBER 18, 1885. 
 
 The Autumn peace hath fallen 
 On these encircling hills, 
 And all the air is silent, 
 Save where the Manor fills 
 Its pools in links enfolding 
 Dear Cademuir's sacred rest, — 
 The sky-gleam from the hiU-top 
 Sheds a blessing on its breast. 
 
 The peace of gracious dying, 
 The calm of graceful dead, 
 
128 ON CADEMUIR. 
 
 Where lay the heather glory, 
 And sheen of bracken spread : 
 There now the bloom decaying, 
 There now the deepening brown, 
 And dark the heather spaces, 
 And dimmed the mountain crown. 
 
 Yet the bent hath greater glory, 
 Most peaceful, now the year 
 Is flowerless and dwining, 
 Ajid leaves are wan and sere, — 
 Well like a noble woman 
 On whom, as years may flow, 
 A finer grace there cometh, 
 Than e'en in youth's full glow. 
 
 Ye bear you well, grey mountains, 
 Unmoved amid decay, 
 The past ye hold in patience. 
 For the future brighter day. 
 
ON CADEMUIR. 129 
 
 Let such a peace spread o'er me 
 In my last passing hour, — 
 Let such a calm enwrap me, 
 O'ershadowed by the Power.; 
 Eesigned to God, yet waiting 
 The spring-hirth, new and free, 
 Like mountain soul, faith-hearted 
 In meek expectancy. 
 
130 
 
 XXIX. 
 IN YAEEOW. 
 
 JANUARY 2, 1886. 
 
 I'll see Newhall this winter day ; 
 The withered hiUs to me are dear ; 
 The lint- white bent, the bracken brown, - 
 Ye well beseem the faded year. 
 
 And restful aU the heights around, 
 Their greenery spent, the summer gone, 
 Now waiting in a blissful calm, 
 With quiet faith, the April sun. 
 
IN YARROW. 131 
 
 Nor without omen now of hope, — 
 The sky-blue rift, the sunny gleam, 
 The soft wind bearing light and shade. 
 The leaping voices of the stream. 
 
 I muse and pass by lone Glenlude, 
 There Yarrow spreads before my sight, - 
 The grey clouds moviag part and throw 
 O'er the brown hills a dappled light. 
 
 K'o gliding stream art thou, this morn, 
 Thy flood each branching channel fills ; 
 In gleaming spears ado"\via the vale 
 Thou pour'st three Yarrows from the hills 
 
 In roaring sweep of Border fray, 
 Thou risest in this year new-born ; 
 Untouched by age, untamed by time, — 
 In strength as of thy earliest mom. 
 
132 IN YARROW. 
 
 !N'ow flow with all thy torrent force 
 Bring pulsing of thy mighty heart, 
 Then softly voice the mournful strain, 
 Heard when fate-stricken lovers part. 
 
 Whate'er the years to come may hold, 
 Of love or power or tragic deed, 
 "Well canst thou match the wondrous tale,- 
 Let maiden sidi or warrior bleed. 
 
 Beseems thee well the gentle tide 
 That flows in summer's gloamin' time ; 
 Befits thee well the forceful mood 
 'Neath this grey sky and winter clime. 
 
 Thou'st known the craving heart of love, 
 The hapless fate of dule and sorrow, 
 The yearning for the south wind's breath 
 To waft a kiss to her on Yarrow. 
 
IN YARROW. 133 
 
 Thou'st known the manly form outstretched, 
 Face upwards on the benty heath, — 
 1^0 braver man than he laid low, 
 N'or stronger arm now limp in death. 
 
 Thou hast so framed our souls to these, 
 Well mayst thou leap and flash to-day ; 
 ITo grander man, no nobler maid 
 Shall live than in thy Ballad lay. 
 
134 
 
 XXX. 
 
 5n ^emorfam. 
 LAURA. 
 
 BORN OCTOBER 28, 1862 ; MARRIED MAY 21, 1885 ; 
 
 DIED APRIL 24, AND LAID IN TRAQUAIR 
 
 CHUBCHTAED, APRIL 28, 1886. 
 
 What — where — art thou this Sabbath mom, 
 The first since thou wert laid in earth 1 
 
 We silent look upon thy grave, 
 
 And wonder 'mid the Spring's new birth. 
 
 The greening boughs droop over thee, 
 The silver daisy stars the grass. 
 
 Sweet bird-notes on the air are borne, 
 The sun-gleams o'er the hillsides pass. 
 
LA URA. 135 
 
 And thou laid low ! not knowing aught — 
 Fresh joy of earth, sun-glint that cheers ; 
 
 And never more thy heaven-touched eyes 
 
 Will shine on spring-tide through their tears. 
 
 The ardent soul, now quenched in death, 
 'Mid promise of the breathing Spring ; 
 
 The heart, God-stirred, that moveth not. 
 Once throbbing to each gentle thing. 
 
 The hand one ne'er shall touch again, 
 The eyes whose gleam we'll never see, 
 
 The voice whose sound was sweetest charm- 
 The past that never more shall be ! 
 
 The welcome smile, the parting grace. 
 The witching air, dear Laura, thine, 
 
 Thou'st shed them from thy early grave. 
 And left for memory to entwine 
 
136 LAURA. 
 
 In one love-cherished wreath for aye 
 Eound thy fair brow and sunny hair ; 
 
 Thou creature of a God-like clime 
 That breathed on earth diviner air. 
 
 Ah ! shall the present e'er for us 
 
 Have such a spell as memory gives ? 
 
 'Mid all the brightest we may see 
 Thine image is the power that lives. 
 
 She sleepeth weU, green-graved Traquair ! 
 
 With thee, her dear-loved hOls around ; 
 Thy storied stream this morn soft makes 
 
 Amid its stones low moaning soimd, — 
 
 N'ot for the first time murmuring o'er 
 The sorrow of our life's mischance, 
 
 But passing ne'er with sadder heart 
 In all the days of old Eomance, 
 
LA URA. 13*7 
 
 Not e'en the lover's broken hope ; 
 
 JS'ot e'en when Lucy left The Glen ; 
 Not e'en when in the weird grey night, 
 
 The heart-blood stained the water wan. 
 
 In vain for thee we longing yearn, 
 We cannot see thee — cannot know ; 
 
 And dawns will flush and evenings pass, 
 And seasons come and seasons go ; 
 
 And birks grow green around the burn, 
 The heather purple o'er the brae ; 
 
 But our dear one will ne'er return, 
 Our Forest Flower is " wede away " ! 
 
 What — where— rart thou this Sabbath morn 1 
 I know there is a hopeless creed — 
 
 But yet we trust, God, that Thou 
 Hast healing for our hearts that bleed. 
 
138 LAURA. 
 
 A shape, men say, as wavering dream, 
 That moves on some far-distant shore, 
 
 Towards which we tm-n with outstretched hands, 
 But reach, ah ! reach thee, never more. 
 
 Not such my faith, not such thy fate — 
 A Heart has yearned for thee ahove ; 
 
 And thou hast gone where angels are. 
 Thy spirit to a boundless love. 
 
 From the sense-world upon thy sight 
 
 Shone faces, God-like, through the veil 3 
 
 Thy brow now radiant with the truth, 
 A-gleam with light that ne'er shall pale. 
 
 We, seeing part, have ready plaint — 
 
 " Thou strik'st, God, with awful hand ; 
 
 Thy wisdom we may not foresee. 
 
 Thy power our fate can not withstand." 
 
LA URA. 139 
 
 " "Why mock us with a heavenly dawn 1 
 Why quench it in its opening ray ? 
 
 Wliy rob us of the promised, wealth, 
 The untold brightening of the day ? " 
 
 Nay, rather thus, thou gentle one. 
 
 We think of thee as summoned home ; 
 
 One longing look to friends on earth, 
 The world's fond yearning overcome. 
 
 He beckoned from within the veil, 
 On Him thou bent thy saintly eyes, 
 
 Then turned the way which He had trod- 
 Thy Hope, the Living Sacrifice. 
 
 May 2, 1886. 
 
140 
 
 XXXI. 
 THE TWEED. 
 
 FROM SUMMER MORN TO EVE, MAY 9, 1886. 
 
 Come bright in the morn's beam, 
 
 Come joyous and free, 
 Brave son of the moorland, 
 
 My heart speeds with thee. 
 
 Through gleaming pool stately, 
 Then rushing in stream. 
 
 Ye pass lightly changing. 
 As moods in a dream. 
 
THE TWEED. 141 
 
 Green alders, birk tresses, 
 
 Fleck thy waves as they glide ; 
 
 The cloud-gleams are borne on 
 Thy pure lapsing tide. 
 
 Meet spirit for worship, 
 Sky-born and earth-given, 
 
 Thou minglest earth's shades with 
 The hues of the heaven. 
 
 Thine the joy of the morning, 
 Thind gleam of bright day ; 
 
 Till grey-coming gloamin' 
 Greets thee on thy way. 
 
 And spreads her veil o'er thee, 
 Withdrawn from our eyes, — 
 
 And we hear thy voice moving 
 In soft fall and rise. 
 
142 THE TWEED. 
 
 While earth's sounds are hushed all 
 In the mild even's calm, 
 
 And the stars and I listen 
 Thy heaven-borne psalm. 
 
143 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 5n /iftemonam, 
 
 LORD DALKEITH. 
 
 WRITTEN IN TARKOW, SEPTEMBER 21, 1886. 
 
 Swift down the steep slope his eager heart bore him ; 
 
 Sharp clang of his rifle, — dread fate in its roar, — 
 The hills' mournful rebound, — the youth death- 
 stricken, — 
 
 He quivers and falls to rise never more : 
 
 Ere deed of glory could brighten his story, — 
 Young, chivalrous, manly, gallant, and true ; 
 
 If no fame, yet no stain, on a hfe brief and noble, 
 When echoed the knell of the hope of Buccleuch. 
 
144 LORD DALKEITH. 
 
 IsTot the first of thy race outstretclied on the moor- 
 land, 
 When the iDirks of the Forest drooped o'er him 
 forlorn, 
 And the bent bore the stain of the blood-stricken 
 foray,— 
 The dead face upturned to the light of the morn. 
 
 Oft tragic and dread was the fate of thy fathers, 
 But o'er them hearts bled not in cot and in shiel, 
 
 As they bleed for thee, youth, sleeping so lonely. 
 On that grim, gory cliff by the shore of LochieL 
 
 N'one but a stranger to tend thy last moments — 
 
 The heir of broad hills, spreading fair in the sun ; 
 A draught from the spring by kind hand thee 
 proffered, — 
 Breathing thanks, a chivalrous knight, for the 
 boon. 
 
LORD DALKEITH. 145 
 
 The grey hours must pass, and dawn streak the 
 morning, 
 Ere Achnacarry can shelter thy head ; 
 But he, in whose heart thou liv'dst in thy life- 
 time. 
 Will lonely this night watch the face of the 
 dead. 
 
 The raven will croak on Farrachmore riven, 
 
 The eagle swoop down from his eyrie on high ; 
 But nought shall come near thee in that pallid 
 slumber, 
 As cherished in death, as in life, thou dost 
 Ue. 
 
 By stormy Lochiel this day ye are mourning ; 
 
 There is dule in the halls of high Achnacarry ; 
 But adown Ettrickdale there's a sorer wail. 
 
 And deep is the du'ge on the braes of Yarrow. 
 
146 LORD DALKEITH. 
 
 Esk, Liddel, and Teviot mingle their sorrow 
 
 O'er the bier of the youth, "both gallant and true, 
 And the Forest winds bear it where'er grows the 
 heather, 
 The sad moan for the fate of the hope of 
 Buccleuch. 
 
147 
 
 XXXIII. 
 IN" MANOR 
 
 AN AFTERNOON PICTURE, SEPTEMBER 11, 1887. 
 
 Its deepest song the Manor sings, 
 
 This day of mist and grey-cloud rain, 
 
 And in its rising swell and fall 
 I hear again the sad refrain, 
 
 That meets me on an autumn day, 
 
 Has touched my ear in youthful morn. 
 
 When first by thee, loved stream, I strayed, - 
 A sorrowing voice, yet not forlorn. 
 
148 IN MANOR. 
 
 Corn-fields are "bare, and on the hills 
 The heather fades, the bent is white, 
 
 The bracken yellow 'mid the green ; 
 Yet throucjh the rain a cjolden light 
 
 'Mid clouds and towers in heaven is tossed, 
 Strays on the hills, strikes mists beneath, 
 
 That rise and pass against the sky. 
 
 Blown by the mountain-spirit's breath. 
 
 'Tis a strange land 'mid those weird hills, 
 "Where cloud and gleam are trailing high ; 
 
 What glances there 1 one daring bird, 
 Hath pierced the tumult of the sky ! 
 
149 
 
 XXXIV. 
 IN MANOR. 
 
 JANUARY 28, 1888. 
 
 Back once again in thee, clear Vale, 
 Where first to life my fancies rose ; 
 
 And now 'twould seem all else is dream, 
 Save what from thee in secret flows, 
 
 And links itself in cunning play 
 
 Of thoughts that shape the inner soul, 
 
 Ne'er voiced in words, in deeds ne'er shown. 
 And owning but their own control 
 
150 IN MANOR. 
 
 Again I'm on the current borne, 
 My outward life has no recall, 
 
 Out-hlotted as it ne'er had been : 
 And thou, dear Vale, art all in all. 
 
 With thee the past, with thee the real, 
 A past of feelings, fancies, tears. 
 
 Life's deeds and words here fade and pale. 
 Thou dreamland of my living years ! 
 
 Yet not e'en Spring has touched thy brow, 
 Nor prankt thee with a smiling flower, 
 
 Clear, piercing air on vale and hill, — 
 The breathing of the wintry hour. 
 
 But in the sky a glowing sun 
 
 Touches with gleam hill-face and stream, 
 As it had waked in summer time, 
 
 And walks as in a joyous dream. 
 
IN MANOR. 151 
 
 It circles all thy lowly glen, 
 
 In glory of its own bright sphere, 
 
 Shoots golden shimmer on thy moors. 
 And triumphs o'er the wintry year. 
 
 To the high heaven one's heart upsoars, 
 In yearning to the God-Hke face, 
 
 And thou and I, dear Yale, are won 
 To worship in a blessed grace. 
 
 What, thee before, the hour of fame % 
 Pomp, power, and tattle, all they bring ? 
 
 What but the flickering gleams that pass 
 On flutterings of a restless wing ? 
 
 The memories of the higher self. 
 
 All that the grave can never claim, — 
 
 All that th' immortal cares to keep, — 
 This thou alone for me canst name. 
 
152 IN MANOR. 
 
 Thus do I yearn to thee, dear Yale, 
 So live I as the life in thee,— 
 
 Hours, days, and years are gone — are nought, 
 In thee I find Eternity ! 
 
153 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 THE ECLIPSE OF THE MOON, 
 
 SATURDAY EVENING, JANUARY 28, 1888 — AS SEEN AT 
 THE LOANING. 
 
 She rose and passed on high, 
 Clear, beautiful, transcendent, as a queen 
 Might go attired for bridal, without peer, — 
 The wonder of the world, serene in joy ; 
 Not witting aught of dark oncoming fate, — 
 Of shadow that should clasp her in eclipse, — 
 A pall of death : in trial still a queen, 
 Ne'er losing mien, touching the cloudy veil 
 To grey transparency, then radiant glow, 
 
154 THE ECLIPSE OF THE MOON. 
 
 In lofty triumph o'er lier darkest hour. 
 At length, in splendour clearer for the shade, 
 She looked, and all the peering stars grew pale. 
 Then passed undoubted to her empire-throne ! 
 
155 
 
 XXXVI. 
 
 THE seve:n" speaes of weddeebue:n'. 
 
 The seven sons of Sir David Home of "Wedclerburn 
 who fell at Flodden, were known as "The Seven 
 Spears of Wedderburn." The incident of the ballad 
 is historically true. The name of the knight, so 
 foully entreated by the Borderers, was Sieur Antoine 
 d'Arces de la Bastie, and the date of his slaughter 
 was September 1517 — exactly four years after 
 Flodden. De la Bastie was slain in revenge for 
 the execution by Albany of Lord Home and liis 
 brother. 
 
156 TEE SEVEN SPEARS OF WEDDERBURN. 
 
 The Seven Spears of Wedderburn, 
 High stalwart lads are they; 
 
 And in the sun and 'neath the moon 
 Eide foremost to the fray. 
 
 In many a Border foray, 
 
 O'er many a heather hill, 
 The spears have glanced, one after one, 
 
 From Blackadder to Till. 
 
 And when the sun was westering 
 On Flodden's crested height, 
 
 The Seven Spears of Wedderburn 
 Gave first shock in the fight ! 
 
 The minions now of Albany 
 
 Are preying on the land, 
 The Laird of Home is done to death. 
 
 And D'Arcy hath command 
 
THE SEVEN SPEARS OF WEDDERBURN. 157 
 
 In all the Merse and Lotliians, 
 Where only Home should reign : 
 
 That Frenchman on his fleetest steed 
 ShaU ne'er win back again. 
 
 So hot and fast gay D'Arcy rides, 
 Behind him hot rides he, 
 
 The youngest Spear of Wedderhurn, 
 Fierce o'er the benty lea. 
 
 Now but one leap to clear the hag, 
 And the foremost horse has won, 
 
 Or the gallant with the comely face 
 Looks no more on the sun. 
 
 One fatal plunge, and D'Arcy 
 Is helpless in the moss : 
 
 l!^ow stay thee Jesu Saviour, 
 With the comfort of the cross ! 
 
158 THE SEVEN SPEARS OF WEDDERBVRN. 
 
 For a ruthless hand is on thee, 
 
 Like a tiger in its ire ; 
 And vengeance in the Borderer 
 
 Burns with a lurid fire. 
 
 And now he turns and homeward rides, 
 
 But from his saddle-bow 
 There dangles by its yeUow locks 
 . A knightly face and brow, — 
 
 So loved of dames and damosels 
 In the gay Court of France, 
 
 Now strung in gleeful triumph 
 'JSTeath the savage Border lance. 
 
 And many a mourning maiden 
 
 Has shed the bitter tear 
 For D'Arcy's fate, the gallant knight, 
 
 And Beauty's chevalier. 
 
THE SEVEN SPEARS OF WEDDERBURN. 159 
 
 What shall be said of thee, young Home, 
 
 And of thy deadly turn ? 
 What shall wipe out the bloody stain 
 
 On the Spear of Wedderburn ? 
 
 August 1883. 
 
160 
 
 XXXVII. 
 
 A LEGE^s^D OF NEIDPATH CASTLE. 
 
 What foundation there may be for this traditional 
 tale, it is difficult to say. Nor, supposing it to 
 have some ground in fact, can it now he ascer- 
 tained whether the incident occurred in the time 
 of the Tweeddale or the March family — Hay or 
 Douglas — who successively occupied I^eidpath 
 Castle. 
 
 Massive and grand the Tower by the Tweed, 
 "Where the woods o'erhanging see 
 
 The rippling gleam of the joyous stream, 
 As it sweeps to the ocean free. 
 
A LEQENB OF NEIDPATH CASTLE. 161 
 
 Its flowered terraces are fair, 
 
 As their lines encircling run, 
 By the ancient yews and leafy limes 
 
 Before the westerin" sun. 
 
 My lord, he scans tlie varied vale, 
 As he paces the bartizan high ; 
 
 Why darkens his brow ia the sunlight fair. 
 And with passion glares his eye 1 
 
 A grimy face there against a stone, 
 A pillared stone he had reared ; 
 
 A beggar's form in dismal rags. 
 It leaned and looked and peered ! 
 
 " I brook not," said the noble Earl, 
 " The sight of unseemly thing " — 
 
 He fumed and swore — " That caitiff there 
 To the dungeon you must bring." 
 
162 A LEGENB OF NEIDPATH CASTLE. 
 
 " I thought to get a better abns, 
 Could I see your lordship's face ; 
 
 Beseemeth well a noble man 
 To bear the poor some grace." 
 
 In dungeon lay the unseemly man, 
 Hoary and bent with years ; 
 
 The poor old soul, — his heart beat hard 
 On his bed of stone and tears ! 
 
 On the morrow they're joyous off to town, 
 The Earl, his lady, and train ; 
 
 The lamps are lit, the dance is set, 
 The hours speed on amain. 
 
 Three days had gone, and life was high, 
 
 The pulses throbbing keen ; 
 But on my lady's sleep that night 
 
 Broke a ghastly pictured scene — 
 
A LEGEND OF NEIDPATII CASTLE. 163 
 
 Eose on her view the dungeon space, 
 
 Dark, dismal its strong girth, 
 No glimpse was there of heaven's light, 
 
 No breath of the fresh'nins earth ! 
 
 There huddled lay on that rocky floor 
 
 A shape as of the dead — 
 A piteous face with a pleading look, 
 
 As it had craved for bread ! 
 
 " Ah ! good my lord, send with post-haste 
 
 To save this dreadful stain ; 
 I'd give all Neidpath's acres broad, 
 
 If that my dream were vain." 
 
 Swift the horseman rode that morn ; 
 
 Eut pale was his look, I trow, 
 When he saw the face on the rocky floor. 
 
 And wot the dream was true — 
 
 % 
 
164 A LEGEND OF NEIDPATE CASTLE. 
 
 There he lay the unseemly man, 
 A huddled form and dead ; 
 
 And fingers gnawed ! — ah ! woe is me — 
 In the Castle by the Tweed ! 
 
165 
 
 XXXVIII. 
 THE LAIRD OF SCHELYE-LAW. 
 
 This baUad has arisen in my mind from some queer, 
 quaint memory of an old tradition. How I got it, 
 I cannot now in the least remember, nor am I at 
 all sure that it has any foundation in fact ; but I 
 rather think it is founded on some sort of belief of 
 foul play on the part of the head of the House of 
 Traquair, with a view to get back to the main 
 branch of the family the lands of Schelynlaw. If 
 so, the incident must have taken place in the time 
 of the first Earl, — in whose character scrupulousness 
 was not a marked feature, though I should be loath 
 
166 THE LAIRD OF SCHELYNLAW. 
 
 to charge him as accessory to murder. This deed 
 may be left to the indiscretion of Jock of Grieston, 
 who came of a violent stock. 
 
 These lands were clearly an original portion of 
 the estate acquired by the Earl of Buchan from 
 Rogers, their temporary possessor ; for we find that 
 in 1492 a claim was made on the Earl by Geilis 
 of Cokbume, daughter of William, third of Hen- 
 derland, and Alexander Murray her husband, for 
 ten merks' worth of "the land" of Schelynlaw. 
 They alleged that they had obtained seisin from 
 William Murray of Traquair, deceased. This 
 William Murray, or William de Moravia — possibly 
 the Outlaw — had been forfeited in 1464, and liis 
 widow Margaret Murray also claimed twelve merks 
 yearly out of the estate of Traquair. She got eight 
 merks from the Earl of Buchan, the new laird. But 
 the estate of Schelynlaw came eventually to be sepa- 
 rated from Traquair, and to be held by a kinsman 
 and his successors. In 1585, Schelynlaw is in pos- 
 session of James Stewart, captain of the King's Life 
 
THE LAIRD OF SCHELYNLAW. 167 
 
 Guard, and youngest brother of Sir Jolin Stewart 
 of Traquair. This James Stewart was served heir 
 to his brother Sir William in 1605, and died in 
 1606. He was succeeded in Schelynlaw by his 
 second son, Sir Eobert Stewart, who was tutor to 
 his nephew John (grandson of James Stewart), after- 
 wards Sir John Stewart and first Earl of Traquair. 
 Sir Eobert Stewart of Schelynlaw was dead before 
 December 12, 1633, as his son, James Stewart of 
 Nether Horsburgh, was on that date served heir 
 to his father in parts of Horsburgh, Kailzie, and 
 Ormistoun, but not in Schelynlaw. There was no 
 independent family of Stewart of Schelynlaw after 
 this date. Sir Eobert was probably the person 
 referred to in the tradition on which this ballad is 
 founded. The Tower of Schelynlaw stood on the 
 slope of the hill, about a quarter of a mile up the 
 vaUey on the east side of the Schelynlaw Bum, 
 which joins the Kirkhouse Burn nearly opposite 
 the Manse of Traquair. Its remains are now green 
 mounds marked by a solitary tree. Myddlemast 
 
168 THE LAIRD OF SCHELYNLAW. 
 
 was the name of the family of Grieston ; they held 
 the property from 1476, with some slight interval, 
 until 1624, when the lands passed or were sold 
 to the first Earl of Traquair, — who died suddenly, 
 March 29, 1659. 
 
 Schelynlaw Tower is fair on the brae, 
 
 Its muirs are green and wide, 
 And Schelynlaw's ewes are the brawest ewes 
 
 In a' the country-side. 
 
 The birk grows there and the rowan red, 
 
 And the burnie brattles down, 
 And there are nae sic knowes as Schelynlaw's, 
 
 With the heather and bent sae brown. 
 
 But wife, three bairns are a' frae him gane, 
 
 Twa sons in a deidly raid ; 
 And but yestreen his bonnie lass Jean 
 
 In Traquair kirkyard was laid. 
 
THE LAIRD OF SCHELYNLAW. 169 
 
 A lane auld man in his ain auld Keep, 
 
 What ane could wish him ill 1 
 Not e'en Traquair wi' his black fause heart, 
 
 And his loons that range the hill 
 
 Out in the morn to the muirland dun, 
 Eode ane frae Schelynlaw's gate. 
 
 Into the mist of the hill he rode, 
 His errand might not wait. 
 
 The opening arms of the grey hill haur 
 
 Folded the rider dim ; 
 Oh, cloud of the muir ! 'tis a gruesome deed, 
 
 Ye hide in your misty rim. 
 
 Up he made for the Black Syke Eig, 
 And round by the Fingland Glen, 
 
 But he turned and turned him aye in the mist • 
 Its glower was as faces of men ! 
 
 Y 
 
170 THE LAIRD OF SCHELYNLAW. 
 
 And oft a voice sounded low in his ear, 
 " Tlie sun is no' gaun to daw — 
 
 For that straik o' blude and that clot o' blude, 
 On the breist o' auld Schelynlaw ! " 
 
 'Twas late o' nicht — to the House of Traquair, 
 A horseman came jaded and rude, 
 
 N"one asked him whence or why he came, 
 JSTor whose on his hands was the blude. 
 
 " But hae ye the Bond 1 " said hard Traquair. 
 
 « The Bond i' faith I hae,— 
 The deid sign nao mair, the lands are thine, — 
 
 But foul was the stroke I gae : 
 
 " I've ridden wi' you ower moss and fell, 
 
 In moonlight and in mirk, 
 And monie a stalwart man I've hewn, — 
 
 So shrive me, Haly Kirk ! 
 
THE LAIRD OF SCHELYNLA W. 171 
 
 " Lewinshope Tarn and Wulrus Will 
 
 I slew, and Jock o' the Ha' ; 
 But there's my richt hand to burn in flame, 
 
 Could I bring back auld Schelynlaw ! " 
 
 Schelynlaw's lands were ne'er bought or sold, 
 Yet they fell to the house of Traquair ; 
 
 But Jock o' Grieston that rode that morn 
 Was ne'er seen to ride ony mair. 
 
 High in state rose the noble Earl, 
 
 Well did he please the King ; 
 He could tell any lie to the States or the Kirk, — 
 
 His warrant the signet-ring. 
 
 Many a year has come and gone, — 
 His pride and his power are away, 
 
 A graceless son has the old lord's lands, 
 And the father's hairs are grey. 
 
172 THE LAIRD OF SCHELYNLAW. 
 
 The Court is back to Edinburgh town, 
 Lairds and braw leddies ride there ; 
 
 A dole some give to a bowed down-man, 
 In pity, — 'tis auld Traquair ! 
 
173 
 
 XXXIX. 
 
 THE DOW GLEK 
 
 IN THE HENDERLAND BURN. 
 \ 
 
 The scene of the supposed retreat of the wife of 
 Cokburne of Henderland during his execution. The 
 tradition that a Cokburne of Henderland was sum- 
 marily hanged over the gateway of his own tower 
 is old and persistent. What is certain is that the 
 laird who so suffered was not William Cokburne, 
 who was tried and executed in Edinburgh, 16th 
 May 1530, though he is probably the person whose 
 fate is bewailed in the exquisite lyric. The Border 
 
174 THE DOW GLEN. 
 
 Widow's Lament. This William of Henderland was 
 fifth in descent from Perys de Cokburne and his 
 wife Marjory — in all likelihood of the family of 
 De Soulis — whose tomb of the early part of the 
 fifteenth century is still preserved on the site of 
 the old chapel on the knowe by the burn. Perys 
 de Cokburne, the first of the Henderland line, was 
 the third son of Sir Alexander Cokburne of that 
 Ilk and Mariota de Veteri-Ponte, a daughter of 
 one of the most illustrious of the !N"orman houses. 
 The Cokburnes of Henderland were a very power- 
 ful branch of the older family. They owned, 
 besides Henderland, Sunderland, and Bold, part 
 of Kirkurd, Dalgliesh on the Tima, and other 
 lands. Margaret Cokburne, daughter of the second 
 Perys Cokburne of Henderland, married Sir Walter 
 Scott of Kirkurd, and her son. Sir David Scott, 
 virtually made the fortunes of the family of Euc- 
 cleuch. Margaret Cokburne, the sister of WiUiam 
 who was executed, married James Veitch of Dawyck, 
 and there was thus probably, besides the wailing by 
 
THE DOW GLEN, Ylh 
 
 the widow on the Meggat, a sad mourning for the 
 brother beyond the hills by the Tweed, (For the 
 genealogy of the Cokbumes, see 'The House of 
 Cockburn,' by Mr Cockburn Hood.) 
 
 Soft downwards glides the bumie 
 Into its deep dark Linn ; 
 
 The rude grey rocks encircling, 
 Listen the quiet din. 
 
 Two rowans twine their branches, 
 "Where the streamlet fills its urn j 
 
 And gleam and shade are flecking 
 The waters as they turn. 
 
 On this fair morn of summer, 
 When the green is on the hill, 
 
 And every glen keeps silence 
 For the music of its rill ; 
 
176 THE DOW GLEN. 
 
 E'o marvel, Linn, old-storied, 
 
 Thou sharest the heart spread-wide. 
 
 In sunny sheen arraying 
 Thy gentle lapsing tide. 
 
 As if thou'dst known no sorrow, 
 N'e'er heard a woman's wail. 
 
 And only note of gladness 
 Been wafted down thy vale. 
 
 Yet once no deeper outburst 
 Heard the ages in their course, 
 
 Nor passion thrown to heaven, 
 In fiercer torrent force : 
 
 As from the wife, heart-broken, 
 Thy waters bore the cry, 
 
 And the forest hills in echo 
 Woke the world's sympathy. 
 
THE DOW QLEN. 177 
 
 Ah ine ! She hears the shoutinsr. 
 Where she cowers beside the Linn ; 
 
 Around her lord men crowding, 
 And all the dying din. 
 
 A stroke of death, none feller 
 Hath ever flashed from cloud ; 
 
 In joy of life at morning, 
 At eve low in his blood. 
 
 And none now knows her story, 
 Where himian heart doth dwell, 
 
 But weeps the woman watching 
 The dead she loved so well ; 
 
 But weeps the widow " happing " 
 Alone the form clay-cold, 
 
 In tender consecration, 
 
 To the keeping of the mold. 
 
178 THE DOW GLEN. 
 
 Linn ! in mine ear thy cadence 
 Hath its own peculiar fall ; 
 
 As echo of a sorrow, 
 
 Through Time which softens all. 
 
 And thy bright lapse, short-gleaming, 
 Of a life the symbol meet, 
 
 Whose joy all sudden closes 
 As hi dark pool at thy feet. 
 
 Clings to thy rock the ivy. 
 
 To keep faith's memory green ; 
 
 And the red rose of the brier 
 
 Glows where her love hath been, — 
 
 A love that is undying, 
 
 As thou, Lian, goest ever on. 
 
 In rise and fall aye soughing 
 In sorrow's monotone ! 
 
 July 17, 1887. 
 
179 
 
 XL. 
 
 TAMMAS TEAILSTICKS, THE DOCTOE'S 
 
 MAN. 
 
 A SCOTTISH INCIDENT OF EIGHTY TEARS AGO. 
 
 Tammas Trailsticks, the doctor's man, 
 Scanned, rev'rent, the doctor's e'e, 
 
 Saw something was workin' within. 
 Took thocht o' what it micht be ! 
 
 John Thamson had dee'd that morn, 
 Baffled a' the doctor's skill ; 
 
 Tammas thocht i' the richts o' science 
 He should come i' the doctor's will ! 
 
180 TAMMAS TRAILSTICKS, 
 
 Tammas, off 'neath the cloud o' niclit, 
 Is up in the auld kirkyaird ; 
 
 " There are plenty o' deid i' their grawfs, 
 Ane can be weel eneuch spared." 
 
 Sair pickin' and howkin' that nicht, — 
 An auld man howkin' the deid, — 
 
 And just as doon he got to the corpse, 
 The mune shone red like a gleed ! 
 
 But Tammas kent naething o' fricht, 
 And soon i' the doctor's hay-loft, 
 
 Lay streekit in a' its deid-claes, 
 
 What was deep i' the kirkyaird croft. 
 
 Auld Tammas, in grey of the morn, 
 
 Speeled up the hay-loft stair. 
 Just to see that a' was quiet ; 
 
 But, my faith, what a sicht he saw there ! 
 
THE DOCTOR'S MAN. 181 
 
 John Thamson, stern, sittin' upricM, 
 
 Wan face-glower through the deid-claes ; 
 
 " The deevil ! " said Tammas, " what's this 1 
 Wni ye fleg us a' in sic ways ? 
 
 " Ye were yirded, I'm sure eneuch, 
 We gaed trampin' ahint the hearse, 
 
 And noo, guid sauf us, ye're here ! 
 Are ye earth's, or heaven's, or worse 1 
 
 " I' the land o' the leevin' ye dee'd. 
 And noo when ye ought to be deid. 
 
 Ye wunna rest like a decent corpse, — 
 For this is there nae renieid ? 
 
 " Odd ! if folk will leeve, let them leeve. 
 If folk wiU dee, let them dee ; 
 
 But to be baith leevin' and deid. 
 
 Sets the coorse o' things clean agee ! " 
 
182 TAMMAS TRAILSTICKS. 
 
 And what happened just after that, 
 
 Is mair than ane daur say, 
 But John Thamson cam' i' the doctor's will, 
 
 In the coorse of that very day ! 
 
 When Tammas himsel' was laid doon 
 I' the trouble he ne'er gat ower, 
 
 Low mutterings cam' aye through his sleep, 
 Weird words o' a deid man's glower ! 
 
 " I canna thole that mune i' the grawf, 
 Aye glowering red like a gleed, — 
 
 Tak' away that wersh-lookin' face 
 Wi' thae deid-claes roond its heid ! 
 
 " I canna thole that fearsome sicht 
 I' that gousty auld hay-loft ; 
 
 Wad to God I had left him to lie, 
 Laigh doon i' the kirkyaird croft." 
 
183 
 
 XLI. 
 
 TO EEDCAP. 
 
 Eedcap ! you're queer and you're gruesome ; 
 
 Out o' night at my window-pane ; 
 Iron toes and fingers, aye scrappling 
 
 Up and down there with might and main. 
 
 Three toes, three fingers of iron, 
 Ne'er cast in an earthly mould ; 
 
 Weird grey eyes gleaming and glowering, 
 With the light of the days of old. 
 
184 TO REDCAP. 
 
 Tour cap of the purple heather, 
 
 Your coat of the thistle's dark green, 
 
 Knee to ankle bare as the moor-bent, 
 Neither shoes nor hosen, I ween. 
 
 And here you have come from the moorland, 
 From the heights where the winds are free. 
 
 Where you spurl 'mid slidders and heather, 
 Known but to the moor-bird and thee ! 
 
 Sombre Glenrath and green Manor, 
 
 Blackhouse, Hundleshope, and Caerdon ; 
 
 Stanhope, Glensax, and the Meldons, 
 Ye know them fuU weU every one. 
 
 I've heard you there whirr with the moor-cock. 
 
 And startle the mountain-hare. 
 Shriek to the whaup and the peesweep, — 
 
 Then grin with glee at the scare ! 
 
TO REDCAP. 185 
 
 Down by the burn, 'mid the shadows, 
 
 Fveheard wail follow on wail 
 Till you had befooled the unwary, 
 
 Then laughed o'er your idle tale. 
 
 Oft when the summer is dwining, 
 
 And the Avind with the bent plays free, 
 
 There, 'mid the Hnt-white tresses. 
 You are flitting in wanton glee. 
 
 Dearest to you is the gloamin', 
 
 With its skirt of the weather gleam 
 
 Outspread on the wavy hill-tops, — 
 High there you bob, and beseem 
 
 That clear grey line 'neath the darkness. 
 Where you revel and sport and play, 
 
 And beckon aye with an eerlish grin 
 To the tomb of the buried day. 
 2 A 
 
186 TO REDCAP. 
 
 A frolic sprite and a restless, — 
 Yet oft in that weird grey eye 
 
 A tear will suddenly glisten, 
 
 When the gleam's in the April sky. 
 
 And e'en in your speeding gambols 
 I've seen you quick pause and turn, 
 
 With a glance for the new-born primrose, 
 In the cleft of the mountain burn. 
 
 Errant sprite ! some memories olden. 
 
 Sweeter thoughts not fraught with pain. 
 
 Awake with the gleam of the opening flower, 
 Broken notes of a finer strain. 
 
 But aye when the night is the darkest, 
 And the wind strives fierce with the rain. 
 
 Ye shriek and pipe and whistle 
 Loudest caU at my window-pane. 
 
TO REDCAP. 187 
 
 And you and I there together 
 Eare converse hold of the past, 
 
 And sounds unearthly and eerie, 
 
 They pass high and low on the blast. 
 
 And you and I talk and whisper, 
 The world knows not what we say ; 
 
 But this deep midnight communion 
 Is worth all of the garish day. 
 
 Oft you tell of the mighty Baron, 
 The wizard lord of Hermitage ; 
 
 By your spell life-charmed 'gainst arrow, 
 Lance, and sword of a foeman's rage. 
 
 Then low in the vault so darksome, 
 In that oaken chest iron-bound. 
 
 You lay, — Lord Soulis beside you, — 
 Eager listening aye for the soimd. 
 
188 TO REDCAP. 
 
 When the rusty lid flies open, 
 
 Oh ! let him not look on your face, 
 
 As breathless he bends his ear to ken 
 The fate that lies aU in your grace ! 
 
 Oh ! sad was that lord when impatient, 
 Eough and rude he knocked on the chest, 
 
 And you rose a sprite stern and wrathful, 
 That would list no more his behest ! 
 
 To the l^inestane Eig they've borne Mm, 
 Lead-enwrapt by the Ninestane burn, 
 
 And there in the red glowing cauldron 
 He hath gotten a deadly turn. 
 
 " But why not stand by your master, 
 
 Eedcap ! both eerie and sly ? 
 Oh ! how was your spell worth the courting. 
 
 When it failed in the hour he should die ? " 
 
TO REDCAP. 189 
 
 " High above aught of our doing, 
 
 Above all the powers of Time, 
 Strong Destiny holds its ongoing, 
 
 Metes our fates from its throne sublime ! 
 
 " Not e'en I might his doom stay more, 
 I, Redcap, both eerie and sly ; 
 
 For the man of blood and the tyrant 
 Must pass in his hour and die." 
 
 sprite now out in the darkness, 
 I trow ye have spoken well ! 
 
 Thy teachings are far-borne echoes 
 From moorland and misty fell. 
 
 Lessons all down olden story, 
 Deep writ on the Border hills, 
 
 Of right and mercy abiding, 
 Whatever the tyrant wills. 
 
190 TO REDCAP. 
 
 sprite now out in the darkness, 
 
 The strong chest has mouldered away ! 
 
 By a living tomb unfettered, 
 
 On the free Border hills you stray. 
 
 I see you bob high on the sky-line ; 
 
 Then bound with the moimtain burn, 
 But mostly you haunt in the darkness, 
 
 Hail the grey cloud of night's return. 
 
 But let the eve be the darkest. 
 
 And the wind strive fierce with the rain, 
 Come and shriek and pipe and Avhistle 
 
 Loudest call at my window-pane. 
 
 My ear is to you ever open. 
 
 Spirit quaint of the olden day : 
 
 Come, decked with the cap of the heather,- 
 To my heart this the richest array ! 
 
191 
 
 LAST WOEDS. 
 
 Dawn-sjjlendours, morns that gloto alone, 
 Where the red sun glimmers on the rain, 
 
 And the mist is caught in heaven high, 
 
 And the hurrCs a-gleam in the breathing glen. 
 
 Tlie moons which ivander o'er the hills, 
 TJie wasted moons which no man sees ; 
 
 The hum-heads where the loaters sing 
 To earless rocks, lone roioan trees. 
 
 For these who cares in this poor time ? 
 
 What profit bring they, stock enhance ? 
 How help one to the social mark. 
 
 Or set him in the worldling's chance ? 
 
192 LAST WORDS. 
 
 Wliy ilien this waste, why all this toealth, 
 Free-cast abroad from God-like hand ? 
 
 For thee not, self-sufficing thing, 
 
 Not thee, mean mortal, understand ! 
 
 But a poor grasp is thine — no more ! 
 
 The "pageant it will ever pass. 
 Whether you hlinh or gaze aright, 
 
 Or grovel with the beasts at grass ! 
 
 ^Tis the Divine, self-floioing One, — 
 The God-like, — he must effloresce ! 
 
 So mil the suns glow, and the moons 
 Gleam o'er your perished paltriness ! 
 
 THE END. 
 
 PRINTED BY WILLLAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS. 
 
BY TEE SAME A UTHOR. 
 
 THE FEELING FOE NATUEE 
 
 IN 
 
 SCOTTISH POETEY. 
 
 Two Vols., fcap. 8vo. 
 Boimd in lialf-roxbiirglie style, price 15s. 
 
 SOME OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 
 
 Daily Telegraph. 
 
 "A charming little book To wander in this wonderful 
 
 field of national epic and ballad, to keep our fingers on the 
 poetic pulse, and mark in its fluctuations the throb of patriotism 
 and the beat of advancing culture and tenderness, witli such a 
 guide as the learned Professor of Rhetoric in Glasgow University, 
 
 is a treat indeed No one can miss the wit and the learning 
 
 of these two volumes, or fail to recognise them as delightful and 
 much valued additions to the national bookshelves." 
 
 Spectator. 
 
 " They constitute, in reality, a new account of Scotch poetry 
 from its dawn to the present day. Apart altogether from their 
 author's ethico-poetical purpose, they are very highly to be 
 commended as being the most careful and tliscriminatingly 
 critical work of the kind which has appeared for a long time." 
 
 Fall Mall Gazette. 
 
 " A very fascinating and delightful contribution to the history 
 of literature." 
 
 Whitehall Review. 
 
 " It is no light task to trace, in all the varied manifestations 
 of poetic genius — half original, half imitative — the influence 
 exercised by external surroundings and sensations, either natural 
 or artificial. In the necessarily minute analysis of his subject, 
 the refined taste and delicate acumen of the critical writer stand 
 him in good stead. Eschewing all needless or ponderous verbi- 
 age, he brings to light the framework of purity, pathos, strength, 
 and beauty that forms the basis of all veritable poetry." 
 
Leeds Mercury. 
 
 " The feeling for nature which the Professor seeks to illustrate 
 and enforce in this charming and suggestive book, is the love of 
 the ' outward world of the senses, as it lies before us untouched 
 by the hand of man.' The book abounds in subtle and deli- 
 cate criticism of the forces which have insensibly swayed Scot- 
 tish thought, and it casts a great deal of light ou many of the 
 less-known poets of the North. A fascinating study of an un- 
 conventional theme." 
 
 Scotsman. 
 
 _" These two small and elegantly printed volumes will be read 
 with pleasure by students of poetry and ffisthetics ;.. The re- 
 sult is a work which presents an instructive historical sketch of 
 the poetry of Scotland in one of its most characteristic aspects." 
 
 Scottish News. 
 
 " Lovers of Scottish melody and soug will revel in the volumes 
 which Messrs Blackwood have presented to the public. A gene- 
 ral historical survey of national verse is followed by a careful 
 review of the lyrics written by Scottish pens from the earliest 
 days of Thomas the E,hymoirr, down to the late productions 
 of David Gray and others, whose verses are still fresh in the 
 literature of the day. " 
 
 Manchester Examiner. 
 
 "Professor Veitch has a very graceful and attractive literary 
 style, and it is the clothing of thought which always commends 
 itself very pleasantly to the receptive intelligence. He has been 
 fortunate in finding a really interesting subject, and he has pro- 
 duced an admirable book." 
 
 Morning Post. 
 
 " Mr Veitch has made himself thoroughly clear, and in an 
 unusual degree interesting throughout his work, which indirectly 
 touches on many branches of intellectual sjieciilation that can 
 but tend to induce an elevated strain of thought. He writes 
 with a genuine feeling, which goes far to excite a desire to follow 
 up the vistas opened in his clever book." 
 
 Daily News. 
 
 " A substantial addition to the literature of poetical criticism." 
 
 \VM. BLACKWOOD & SONS, Edinburgh and London. 
 
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