_Seer_.----Lochiel! Lochiel! beware of the day! For, dark and despairing, my sight I may seal, But man cannot cover what God would reveal. 'Tis the sunset of life gives me mystical lore, And coming events cast their shadows before. I tell thee, Culloden's dread echoes shall ring, With the bloodhounds that bark for thy fugitive king. Lo! anointed by heaven with the vials of wrath, Behold, where he flies on his desolate path! Now in darkness and billows he sweeps from my sight; Rise! rise! ye wild tempests, and cover his flight!-- 'Tis finished. Their thunders are hushed on the moors; Culloden is lost, and my country deplores. But where is the iron-bound prisoner? Where? For the red eye of battle is shut in despair. Say, mounts he the ocean-wave, banished, forlorn, Like a limb from his country cast bleeding and torn? Ah, no! for a darker departure is near,-- The war drum is muffled, and black is the bier; His death bell is tolling! Oh, mercy! dispel Yon sight that it freezes my spirit to tell! Life flutters convulsed in his quivering limbs, And his blood-streaming nostril in agony swims; Accursed be the faggots that blaze at his feet, Where his heart shall be thrown, ere it ceases to beat, With the smoke of its ashes to poison the gale---- _Lochiel_. Down, soothless insulter! I trust not the tale: For never shall Albyn a destiny meet So black with dishonour, so foul with retreat. Though my perishing ranks should be strewed in their gore, Like ocean weeds heaped on the surf-beaten shore, Lochiel, untainted by flight or by chains, While the kindling of life in his bosom remains, Shall victor exult, or in death be laid low, With his back to the field, and his feet to the foe! And leaving in battle no blot on his name, Look proudly to heaven from the death-bed of fame. CAMPBELL. [Note: _Life flutters convulsed &c._ Describes the barbarous death which awaited the traitor according to the statute book of England, as it then stood. This was the penalty dealt to the rebels of 1745.] * * * * * COLUMBUS IN SIGHT OF LAND. For three days they stood in this direction, and the further they went the more frequent and encouraging were the signs of land. Flights of small birds of various colours, some of them such as sing in the fields, came flying about the ships, and then continued towards the south-west, and others were heard also flying by in the night. Tunny fish played about the smooth sea, and a heron, a pelican, and a duck, were seen, all bound in the same direction. The herbage which floated by was fresh and green, as if recently from land, and the air, Columbus observes, was sweet and fragrant as April breezes in Seville.