And the proud march, which victors tread, Sinks in the wailing for the dead. O well for me, if mine alone That dirge's deep prophetic tone! If, as my tuneful fathers said, This harp, which erst Saint Modan swayed, Can thus its master's fate foretell, Then welcome be the minstrel's knell!
VIII
'But ah! dear lady, thus it sighed The eve thy sainted mother died; And such the sounds which, while I strove To wake a lay of war or love, Came marring all the festal mirth, Appalling me who gave them birth, And, disobedient to my call, Wailed loud through Bothwell's bannered hall, Ere Douglases to ruin driven, Were exiled from their native heaven. Oh! if yet worse mishap and woe, My master's house must undergo, Or aught but weal to Ellen fair, Brood in these accents of despair, No future bard, sad Harp! shall fling Triumph or rapture from thy string; One short, one final strain shall flow, Fraught with unutterable woe, Then shivered shall thy fragments lie, Thy master cast him down and die!'
IX
Soothing she answered him—'Assuage, Mine honored friend, the fears of age; All melodies to thee are known, That harp has rung, or pipe has blown, In Lowland vale or Highland glen, From Tweed to Spey—what marvel, then, At times, unbidden notes should rise, Confusedly bound in memory's ties, Entangling, as they rush along, The war-march with the funeral song? Small ground is now for boding fear; Obscure, but safe, we rest us here. My sire, in native virtue great, Resigning lordship, lands, and state, Not then to fortune more resigned, Than yonder oak might give the wind; The graceful foliage storms may reave, The noble stem they cannot grieve. For me,'—she stooped, and, looking round, Plucked a blue hare-bell from the ground— 'For me, whose memory scarce conveys An image of more splendid days, This little flower, that loves the lea, May well my simple emblem be; It drinks heaven's dew as blithe as rose That in the king's own garden grows; And when I place it in my hair, Allan, a bard is bound to swear He ne'er saw coronet so fair.' Then playfully the chaplet wild She wreathed in her dark locks, and smiled.
