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 ye 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 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 lowly 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 blast 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 was fit for archangel to wield
Was light in his terrible hand.

Yet, bleeding and bound though the Wallace wight
For his long-loved country die,
The bugle ne'er sung to a braver knight
Than William of Elderslie!

But the day of his glory shall never depart:
His head unentombed shall with glory be palmed;
From its blood-streaming altar his spirit shall start;
Though the raven has fed on his mouldering heart
A nobler was never embalmed!

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