No! ere they quell our valour’s veins, They’ll upward to their fountains Turn back the rivers on our plains, And trample flat our mountains. Follow, follow! Shake the Spanish blade, and sing— France shall ne’er enslave us: Tyrants shall not brave us. VERSES ON MARIE ANTOINETTE.[85] Behold where Gallia’s captive queen, With steady eye and look serene, In life’s last awful—awful scene, Slow leaves her sad captivity. Hark! the shrill horn that rends the sky Bespeaks thy ready murder nigh, The long parade of death I spy, And leave my lone captivity. Farewell, ye mansions of despair, Scenes of my sad sequestered care. The balm of bleeding war is near. Adieu, my lone captivity. To purer mansions in the sky, Fair Hope directs my grief-worn eye, Where sorrow’s child no more shall sigh Amid her lone captivity. Adieu, ye babes whose infant bloom Beneath oppression’s lawless doom, Pines in the solitary gloom Of undeserved captivity. O Power benign that rul’st on high, Cast down, cast down a pitying eye; Shed consolation from the sky, To soothe their sad captivity. Now virtue’s sure reward to prove, I seek empyreal realms above, To meet my long-departed love; Adieu my lone captivity. [85] These lines were published in a leading Glasgow newspaper in 1792. DIRGE OF WALLACE. They lighted the tapers at dead of night, And chanted their holiest hymn, But her brow and her bosom were damp with affright, Her eye was all sleepless and dim. And the lady of Elderslie wept for her lord, When a deathwatch beat in her lonely room, When her curtain had shook of its own accord, And the raven had flapped at her window board, To tell of her warrior’s doom. Now sing the death-song and loudly pray For the soul of my knight so dear, And call me a widow this wretched day, Since the warning of God is here. For a nightmare rides on my strangled sleep— The lord of my bosom is doomed to die; His valorous heart they have wounded deep, And the blood-red tears shall his country weep, For Wallace of Elderslie. Yet knew not his country that ominous hour, Ere the loud matin bell was rung, That a trumpet of death on an English tower Had the dirge of her champion sung. When his dungeon light looked dim and red On the high-born blood of a martyr slain, No anthem was sung at his holy death-bed; No weeping was there when his bosom bled, And his heart was rent in twain. Oh! it was not thus when his ashen spear Was true to that knight forlorn, And hosts of a thousand were scattered like deer, At the sound of the hunter’s horn! When he strode o’er the wreck of each well-fought field, With the yellow-haired chiefs of his native land; For his lance was not shivered on helmet or shield, And the sword that seemed fit for archangel to wield, Was light in his terrible hand.