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Home  »  Poems of Places An Anthology in 31 Volumes  »  Loch Leven Castle

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

Loch Leven

Loch Leven Castle

By Amanda M. Corey Edmond (1824–1862)

PROUD ruin on Loch Leven’s stream,

Whose waters dance with silver gleam,

Beneath the gentle breezes’ swell,

That bear upon their downy wing

The fragrance of the heather bell,

On every wild hill blossoming,

With ivied battlement and tower,

And remnant rude of kingly power,

Thou standest as in days of yore,

When pensive Mary, Scotland’s Queen,

A prisoner on the castled shore,

Gazed on the lake of sparkling sheen.

Thy name with hers is woven yet,—

And who shall Mary’s name forget,

Though thou may’st crumble from the view,

And Leven’s waters cease to run,

Reflecting from their breast of blue

The silver moon and golden sun?

No warden’s fire shall e’er again

Illume Loch Leven’s bosom fair,

Nor clarion shrill of armored men

The breeze across the lake shall bear.

But while remains a stone of thine,

It shall be linked to royal fame,

For there a Rose of Stuart’s line

Hath left the fragrance of her name.