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Home  »  The Oxford Book of English Verse  »  657. A Jacobite’s Epitaph

Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. 1919. The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900.

Thomas Babington Macaulay, Lord Macaulay. 1800–1859

657. A Jacobite’s Epitaph

TO my true king I offer’d free from stain 
Courage and faith; vain faith, and courage vain. 
For him I threw lands, honours, wealth, away, 
And one dear hope, that was more prized than they. 
For him I languish’d in a foreign clime,         5
Gray-hair’d with sorrow in my manhood’s prime; 
Heard on Lavernia Scargill’s whispering trees, 
And pined by Arno for my lovelier Tees; 
Beheld each night my home in fever’d sleep, 
Each morning started from the dream to weep;  10
Till God, who saw me tried too sorely, gave 
The resting-place I ask’d, an early grave. 
O thou, whom chance leads to this nameless stone, 
From that proud country which was once mine own, 
By those white cliffs I never more must see,  15
By that dear language which I spake like thee, 
Forget all feuds, and shed one English tear 
O’er English dust. A broken heart lies here.