| |
| AT Market Hill, as well appears | |
| By chronicle of ancient date, | |
| There stood for many hundred years | |
| A spacious thorn before the gate. | |
| |
| Hither came every village maid, | 5 |
| And on the boughs her garland hung; | |
| And here, beneath the spreading shade, | |
| Secure from satyrs sat and sung. | |
| |
| Sir Archibald, that valorous knight, | |
| The lord of all the fruitful plain, | 10 |
| Would come and listen with delight; | |
| For he was fond of rural strain. | |
| |
| (Sir Archibald, whose favorite name | |
| Shall stand for ages on record, | |
| By Scottish bards of highest fame, | 15 |
| Wise Hawthornden and Stirling’s lord.) | |
| |
| But time with iron teeth, I ween, | |
| Has cankered all its branches round; | |
| No fruit or blossom to be seen, | |
| Its head reclining toward the ground. | 20 |
| |
| This aged, sickly, sapless thorn, | |
| Which must, alas! no longer stand, | |
| Behold the cruel Dean in scorn | |
| Cuts down with sacrilegious hand. * * * * * | |
| Thus, when the gentle Spina found | 25 |
| The thorn committed to her care, | |
| Received its last and deadly wound, | |
| She fled, and vanished into air. | |
| |
| But from the root a dismal groan | |
| First issuing struck the murderer’s ears: | 30 |
| And, in a shrill revengeful tone, | |
| This prophecy he trembling hears: | |
| |
| “Thou chief contriver of my fall, | |
| Relentless Dean, to mischief born; | |
| My kindred oft thine hide shall gall, | 35 |
| Thy gown and cassock oft be torn. | |
| |
| “And thy confederate dame, who brags | |
| That she condemned me to the fire, | |
| Shall rend her petticoats to rags, | |
| And wound her legs with every brier. | 40 |
| |
| “Nor thou, Lord Arthur, shalt escape; | |
| To thee I often called in vain, | |
| Against that assassin in crape; | |
| Yet thou couldst tamely see me slain: | |
| |
| “Nor, when I felt the dreadful blow, | 45 |
| Or chid the Dean, or pinched thy spouse; | |
| Since you could see me treated so | |
| (An old retainer to your house), | |
| |
| “May that fell Dean, by whose command | |
| Was formed this Machiavelian plot, | 50 |
| Not leave a thistle on thy land; | |
| Then who will own thee for a Scot? | |
| |
| “Pigs and fanatics, cows and teagues, | |
| Through all my empire I foresee, | |
| To tear thy hedges join in leagues, | 55 |
| Sworn to revenge my thorn and me. | |
| |
| “And thou, the wretch ordained by fate, | |
| Neal Gahagan, Hibernian clown, | |
| With hatchet blunter than thy pate, | |
| To hack my hallowed timber down; | 60 |
| |
| “When thou, suspended high in air, | |
| Diest on a more ignoble tree | |
| (For thou shalt steal thy landlord’s mare), | |
| Then, bloody caitiff! think on me.” | |
| |
