Classic Poem

Young Alasdair of Oolava is dead
In the dark and over the deep,
The world for his pillow, the wind his plaid,
And I live on and weep!
From the hour when they put him on my knee,
I knew, my grief, what the end would be;
I knew before he gave smile or sigh,
It was not at home his bones would lie,
That he would love and travel and die,
And leave me alone in Oolava.

At night I am crying along the shore:
“O Alasdair, here is home!”
And leave for your welcome the open door,—
Not even your ghost will come!
It must walk sad sands in the foreign lands,
In blindness and blackness with outstretched hands,
Too far, too far over sundering seas,
Too far from your folk in the Hebrides
For our poor dirging to give you ease,
Oolava! Oolava! Oolava!

Did I know this night where my dead son
Walks bloody with his chief,
Would I not put plaid on my head and run
Through the last black gate of grief,
To walk by his side and bring to his mind
The darling isle and the folk so kind?
For it's dark in Death where you are lost,
My Alasdair, my wandering ghost;
And far is the cry from that cursed coast
To the little isle of Oolava!