Classic Poem

Before the firelight in the Winter gloaming,
The one far-wandered soberly will tell
The brave memorials of his weary roaming,
And like a warlock hold us in his spell,
Till, sudden, at the lozen comes a rapping—
“O Sennachie, I'd speak wi' ye my son!”
The wanderer for the cold night must be happing
The cup unfinished and the tale half-done.

And when the door is snecked behind the rover
Who went wi' yon Convoy we need not name,
We tell again his gallant stories over,
The thought in every heart of us the same—
“O fine were these the tales that he narrated,
But there were others that he had in store;
Ours was the gain had he a little waited,
But now our ears are vain for evermore!”

So you are happed and gone, and there you're lying,
Far from the glens, deep down the slope of seas,
Out of the stormy night, the grey sleet flying,
And never again for you the Hebrides!
We need not keep the peat and cruisie glowing,
The goodwife may put by her ale and bread,
For you, who kept the crack so blithely going,
Now sleep at last, silent and comforted.

Our Winter's here, and mists through the glens are trailing,
The constant rain-smirr rots the fallen leaf,
Lost in the years old Ossian's ghosts are wailing,
We'll bar the door and be alone with Grief;
But one last sprig of Highland heather's growing
Upon the hills of Home that well you knew,
And it (Oh tell him, wind that's southward blowing!),
My Wanderer, my Sennachie's for you!