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Home  »  Poems of Places An Anthology in 31 Volumes  »  In the Pass of Killicranky

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Scotland: Vols. VI–VIII. 1876–79.

Killiecrankie

In the Pass of Killicranky

By William Wordsworth (1770–1850)

An Invasion Being Expected, October, 1803

SIX thousand veterans, practised in war’s game,

Tried men, at Killicranky were arrayed

Against an equal host that wore the plaid,

Shepherds and herdsmen. Like a whirlwind came

The Highlanders, the slaughter spread like flame;

And Garry, thundering down his mountain-road,

Was stopped, and could not breathe beneath the load

Of the dead bodies. ’T was a day of shame

For them whom precept and the pedantry

Of cold, mechanic battle do enslave.

O for a single hour of that Dundee,

Who on that day the word of onset gave!

Like conquest would the men of England see,

And her foes find a like inglorious grave.