Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE GLEN OF ROSLIN, by DAVID MACBETH MOIR


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE GLEN OF ROSLIN, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Hark! 'twas the trumpet rung!
Last Line: As opal pure each morn!
Alternate Author Name(s): Delta
Subject(s): Peace; Scotland; Scottish Translations; Victory; War


I.

HARK! 'twas the trumpet rung!
Commingling armies shout;
And echoing far yon woods among,
The ravage and the rout!
The voice of triumph and of wail,
Of victor and of vanquish'd blent,
Is wafted on the vernal gale:
A thousand bows are bent,
And, 'mid the hosts that throng the vale,
A shower of arrows sent.

II.

For Saxon foes invade
The Baliol's kingless realm:
Their myriads swarm in yonder shade,
The weak to overwhelm:—
'Tis Seagrave, on destruction bent,
From Freedom's roll to blot the land,
By England's haughty Edward sent;
But never on her mountain strand
Shall Caledonia sit content—
Content with fetter'd hand.

III.

Not while one patriot breathes—
Not while each broomy vale
And cavern'd cliff bequeaths
Some old heroic tale!
The Wallace and the Græme have thrown
The lustre of their deeds behind,
The children to their fathers' own
Unconquer'd straths to bind;
By every hearth their tale is known,
In every heart enshrined.

IV.

The Comyn lets not home
To tell a bloodless tale,
And forth in arms with Frazer come
The chiefs of Teviotdale.
In Roslin's wild and wooded glen
The clash of swords the shepherd hears,
And from the groves of Hawthornden
Gleam forth ten thousand spears:
For Scottish mothers bring forth men
Of might, that mock at fears!

V.

Three camps divided raise
Their snowy tops on high;
The breeze-unfurling flag displays
Its lions to the sky:
While chants the mountain lark in air
Its matin carols of delight,
The tongue of mirth is jocund there;
Nor is it dreamt, ere night,
The sun shall shed its golden glare
On thousands slain in fight!

VI.

Baffled, and backward borne,
Is England's foremost war;
The Saxon battle-god, forlorn,
Remounts his raven car.
'Tis vain—a third time Victory's cheer
Bursts forth from that resistless foe,
Who, headlong, on their fierce career,
Like mountain torrents go:
The invaders are dispersed like deer,
And whither none may know!

VII.

Three triumphs in a day!
Three hosts subdued by one!
Three armies scattered, like the spray,
Beneath one vernal sun!
Who, pausing 'mid this solitude
Of rocky streams, o'erhung with trees,
Where rears the cushat-dove its brood,
And foxglove lures the bees,
Could think that men had shed the blood
Of man in haunts like these!

VIII.

A dream—a nightmare dream
Of shadowy ages gone,
When daylight wore a demon gleam,
And fact like fiction shone:
A dream!—and it hath left no power
To blast these beauteous scenes around,
Which look as if a halcyon bower
All gentlest things had found
Here, in this paradise, where flower,
And tree, and bird abound.

IX.

Yes! the great Mother still
Claims Roslin for her own,
And Summer, girt with rock and rill,
Here mounts a chosen throne:
Blue Esk to Gorton's listening woods
Is meekly murmuring all day long,
And birds for sheltering solitudes
Pay tributary song:
Check'd be each step that here intrudes
To offer Nature wrong.

X.

St Clair! thy princely halls
In ruin sink decay'd,
And moss now greens the chapel walls
Where thy proud line is laid!—
What sees the stranger musing here,
Where mail-clad men no longer dwell?
A bleach-field spreads its whiteness near,
And smoke-wreaths round the dell
Show whence the Christian worshipper
Obeys the Sabbath bell.

XI.

Thus let it ever be!
Let human discord cease,
And earth the blest millennium see
Of purity and peace!
Die sin away—as dies the mist
Before the cleansing sunrise borne—
And Pity, vainly watchful, list
For Misery's moan forlorn!
Bright be each eve as amethyst,
As opal pure each morn!





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