Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE CLEARANCE SONG, by JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE CLEARANCE SONG, by             Poem Explanation         Poet's Biography
First Line: From lochourn to glenfinnan the grey mountains ranging
Last Line: The sons of the gael have no home in the highlands!
Subject(s): Memory


FROM Lochourn to Glenfinnan the grey mountains ranging,
Nought falls on the eye but the changed and the changing,
From the hut by the lochside, the farm by the river,
Macdonalds and Camerons pass -- and for ever.

The flocks of one stranger the long grass are roaming,
Where a hundred bien homesteads smok'd bonnie at gloamin,'
Our wee crofts run wild wi' the bracken and heather,
And our gables stand ruinous, bare to the weather.

To the green mountain sheilings went up in old summers
From farm-town and clachan how many blithe cummers!
Though green the hill-pastures lie, cloudless the heaven,
No milker is singing there, morning or even.

The Chiefs, whom for ages our claymores defended,
Whom landless and exiled our fathers befriended,
From their homes drive their clansmen, when famine is sorest,
Cast out to make room for the deer of the forest.

Yet on far fields of fame, when the red ranks were reeling,
Who press'd to the van like the men of the sheiling?
Ye were fain in your need Highland broadswords to borrow:
Where, where are they now, should the foe come to-morrow?

Alas for the day of the mournful Culloden!
The Clans from that hour down to this have been trodden;
They were leal to their Prince, when red wrath was pursuing,
And have reap'd in return but oppression and ruin.

It's plaintive in harvest, when lambs are a-spaining,
To hear the hills loud with ewe-mothers complaining --
Ah! sadder that cry comes from mainland and islands,
The sons of the Gael have no home in the Highlands!





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