"But ah! dear lady, thus it sigh'd 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, Wail'd loud through Bothwell's[94] banner'd 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 shiver'd shall thy fragments lie, Thy master cast him down and die!" [94] Bothwell Castle on the Clyde, nine miles from Glasgow, was the principal seat of the Earls of Angus, the elder branch of the Douglas family, until 1528, when James V. escaped from his virtual imprisonment by Angus acting as regent, and drove the Douglases into exile, confiscating their estates (See Introduction). IX. Soothing she answer'd him--"Assuage, Mine honor'd friend, the fears of age; All melodies to thee are known, That harp has rung or pipe[95] has blown, In Lowland vale or Highland glen, From Tweed to Spey[96]--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 resign'd, Than yonder oak might give the wind; The graceful foliage storms may reave,[97] The noble stem they cannot grieve. For me,"--she stoop'd, and, looking round, Pluck'd a blue harebell 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 wreath'd in her dark locks, and smiled. [95] Bagpipe. [96] The river Tweed is on the southern boundary of Scotland. The Spey is a river of the extreme north. [97] Snatch away. X.