| |
| THE LAST, the fatal hour is come, | |
| That bears my love from me: | |
| I hear the dead note of the drum, | |
| I mark the gallows’ tree! | |
| |
| The bell has tolled; it shakes my heart; | 5 |
| The trumpet speaks thy name; | |
| And must my Gilderoy depart | |
| To bear a death of shame? | |
| |
| No bosom trembles for thy doom, | |
| No mourner wipes a tear; | 10 |
| The gallows’ foot is all thy tomb, | |
| The sledge is all thy bier. | |
| |
| O Gilderoy! bethought we then | |
| So soon, so sad to part, | |
| When first in Roslin’s lovely glen | 15 |
| You triumphed o’er my heart? | |
| |
| Your locks they glittered to the sheen, | |
| Your hunter garb was trim; | |
| And graceful was the ribbon green | |
| That bound your manly limb! | 20 |
| |
| Ah! little thought I to deplore | |
| Those limbs in fetters bound; | |
| Or hear, upon the scaffold floor, | |
| The midnight hammer sound. | |
| |
| Ye cruel, cruel, that combined | 25 |
| The guiltless to pursue; | |
| My Gilderoy was ever kind, | |
| He could not injure you! | |
| |
| A long adieu! but where shall fly | |
| Thy widow all forlorn, | 30 |
| When every mean and cruel eye | |
| Regards my woe with scorn? | |
| |
| Yes! they will mock thy widow’s tears, | |
| And hate thine orphan boy; | |
| Alas! his infant beauty wears | 35 |
| The form of Gilderoy. | |
| |
| Then will I seek the dreary mound | |
| That wraps thy mouldering clay, | |
| And weep and linger on the ground, | |
| And sigh my heart away. | 40 |
| |
