The winds breathe low; the yellow leaf Scarce whispers from the tree; So gently flows the parting breath, When good men cease to be. How beautiful on all the hills, The crimson light is shed! 'Tis like the peace the Christian gives To mourners round his bed. How mildly on the wandering cloud The sunset beam is cast! So sweet the memory left behind, Where loved ones breathe their last And lo! above the dews of night The vesper star appears; So faith lights up the mourner's heart, Whose eyes are dim with tears. Night falls, but soon the morning light Its glories shall restore; And thus the eyes that sleep in death Shall wake to close no more. _Peabody._ Daylight is on the hills, and we are off once more down the Tweed, which gathers volume by accessions from tributary streams, and mirrors in its clear bosom many a happy home, nestling among the trees on its banks. We pass Coldstream, on the north bank of the Tweed, from its proximity to England a sort of Gretna Green in former times, where Lord Brougham was married at one of the hotels; whence we journey to Tillmouth; at which place the Till, a narrow, deep, sullen stream, flows into the Tweed. Beneath Twisel Castle, which stands upon its banks, you see the ancient bridge by which the English crossed the Till before the battle of Flodden. --"They cross'd The Till, by Twisel Bridge. High sight it is, and haughty, while They drew into the deep defile; Beneath the cavern'd cliff they fall, Beneath the castle's airy wall. By rock, by oak, by hawthorn-tree, Troop after troop are disappearing; Troop after troop their banners rearing, Upon the eastern bank you see, Still pouring down the rocky den Where flows the sullen Till, And rising from the dim wood glen Standards on standards, men on men In slow succession still, And sweeping o'er the Gothic arch, And passing on, in ceaseless march To gain the opposing hill." _Marmion._ Flodden Field, on which the "flowers of the forest," were cut down so mercilessly, is not far from here, and the whole region seems invested with an air of "dule and wae." "Dule and wae for the order sent our lads to the Border! The English, for once by guile won the day; The Flowers of the Forest, that focht aye the foremost. The prime o' our land are cauld in the clay. "We hear nae mair lilting at our yowe-milking, Women and bairns are heartless and wae; Sighing and moaning on ilka green loaning-- The Flowers of the Forest are a' wede away."[181] [Footnote 181: "The Flowers of the Forest," by Miss Jane Elliot, one of the sweetest and most affecting ballads of Scotland. By the 'Flowers of the Forest' are meant the young men of Ettrick Forest, slain at Flodden Field.]