Cast your plaids, draw your blades, Forward each man set! Pibroch of Donuil Dhu Knell for the onset ! SIR WALTER SCOTT. THE SOLDIER'S DREAM. UR bugles sang truce, for the night cloud had lowered, And the sentinel stars set their watch in the sky; And thousands had sunk on the ground overpowered, The weary to sleep, and the wounded to die. When reposing that night on my pallet of straw By the wolf-scaring fagot that guarded the slain, Methought from the battlefield's dreadful array I flew to the pleasant fields traversed so oft In life's morning march, when my bosom was young; I heard my own mountain goats bleating aloft, And knew the sweet strain that the corn reapers sung. Then pledged we the wine cup, and fondly I swore And my wife sobbed aloud in her fullness of heart. HOME THEY BROUGHT HER WARRIOR. 27 "Stay, stay with us! rest! thou art weary and worn!" And fain was their war-broken soldier to stay; But sorrow returned with the dawning of morn, THOMAS CAMPBELL. HOME THEY BROUGHT HER WARRIOR DEAD. OME they brought her warrior dead: HO She nor swooned, nor uttered cry; All her maidens, watching, said, "She must weep or she will die." Then they praised him, soft and low, Yet she neither spoke nor moved. Stole a maiden from her place, Rose a nurse of ninety years, Set his child upon her knee- ALFRED TENNYSON. Now On every blooming tree, And spreads her sheets o' daisies white. Now Phoebus cheers the crystal streams, But nought can glad the weary wight That fast in durance lies. Now lav'rocks wake the merry morn, Aloft on dewy wing; The merlè, in his noon-tide bower, LAMENT OF MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS. 29 Now blooms the lily by the bank, The meanest hind in fair Scotland May rove their sweets amang; I was the Queen o' bonnie France, Fu' lightly rase I in the morn, And never-ending care. My son my son! may kinder stars And may those pleasures gild thy reign, That ne'er wad blink on mine! God keep thee frae thy mother's faes, Or turn their hearts to thee: And, where thou meet'st thy mother's friend, Oh! soon, to me, may summer suns Nae mair, to me, the autumn winds Wave o'er the yellow corn! And in the narrow house o' death Let winter round me rave; And the next flow'rs that deck the spring Y cool Siloam's shady rill BY How sweet the lily grows! How sweet the breath beneath the hill Of Sharon's dewy rose! Lọ, such the child whose early feet The paths of peace have trod; Whose secret heart, with influence sweet, Is upward drawn to God. By cool Siloam's shady rill The lily must decay; The rose that blooms beneath the hill Must shortly fade away, REGINALD HEBER. |