Classic Poem

Sweet Teviot! on thy silver tide
The glaring bale-fires blaze no more;
No longer steel-clad warriors ride
Along thy wild and willowed shore;
Where'er thou wind'st by dale or hill,
All, all is peaceful, all is still,
As if thy waves, since Time was born,
Since first they rolled their way to Tweed,
Had only heard the shepherd's reed,
Nor started at the bugle-horn.

Unlike the tide of human time,
Which, though it change in ceaseless flow,
Retains each grief, retains each crime,
Its earliest course was doomed to know;
And, darker as it downward bears,
Is stained with past and present tears.
Low as that tide has ebbed with me,
It still reflects to memory's eye
The hour my brave, my only boy
Fell by the side of great Dundee.

Why, when the volleying musket played
Against the bloody Highland blade,
Why was not I beside him laid!--
Enough--he died the death of fame;
Enough--he died with conquering Graeme.