| |
| NIGHT and morning were at meeting | |
| Over Waterloo: | |
| Cocks had sung their earliest greeting, | |
| Faint and low they crew, | |
| For no paly beam yet shone | 5 |
| On the heights of Mount Saint John; | |
| Tempest-clouds prolonged the sway | |
| Of timeless darkness over day; | |
| Whirlwind, thunder-clap, and shower | |
| Marked it a predestined hour. | 10 |
| Broad and frequent through the night | |
| Flashed the sheets of levin-light: | |
| Muskets, glancing lightnings back, | |
| Showed the dreary bivouac | |
| Where the soldier lay, | 15 |
| Chill and stiff, and drenched with rain, | |
| Wishing dawn of morn again, | |
| Though death should come with day. | |
| ’T is at such a tide and hour, | |
| Wizard, witch, and fiend have power, | 20 |
| And ghastly forms through mist and shower, | |
| Gleam on the gifted ken; | |
| And then the affrighted prophet’s ear | |
| Drinks whispers strange of fate and fear, | |
| Presaging death and ruin near | 25 |
| Among the sons of men;— | |
| Apart from Albyn’s war-array, | |
| ’T was then gray Allan sleepless lay; | |
| Gray Allan, who, for many a day, | |
| Had followed stout and stern, | 30 |
| Where through battle’s rout and reel, | |
| Storm of shot and hedge of steel, | |
| Led the grandson of Lochiel, | |
| Valiant Fassiefern. | |
| Through steel and shot he leads no more, | 35 |
| Low-laid mid friends’ and foemen’s gore,— | |
| But long his native lake’s wild shore, | |
| And Sunart rough, and high Ardgower, | |
| And Morven long shall tell, | |
| And proud Ben Nevis hear with awe, | 40 |
| How, upon bloody Quatre-Bras, | |
| Brave Cameron heard the wild hurra | |
| Of conquest as he fell. | |
| |
| Lone on the outskirts of the host, | |
| The weary sentinel held post, | 45 |
| And heard, through darkness far aloof, | |
| The frequent clang of courser’s hoof, | |
| Where held the cloaked patrol their course; | |
| And spurred ’gainst storm the swerving horse; | |
| But there are sounds in Allan’s ear, | 50 |
| Patrol nor sentinel may hear, | |
| And sights before his eye aghast | |
| Invisible to them have passed, | |
| When down the destined plain | |
| ’Twixt Britain and the bands of France, | 55 |
| Wild as marsh-born meteors glance, | |
| Strange phantoms wheeled a revel dance, | |
| And doomed the future slain. | |
| Such forms were seen, such sounds were heard, | |
| When Scotland’s James his march prepared | 60 |
| For Flodden’s fatal plain; | |
| Such, when he drew his ruthless sword, | |
| As choosers of the slain, adored | |
| The yet unchristened Dane. | |
| An indistinct and phantom band, | 65 |
| They wheeled their ring-dance hand in hand, | |
| With gesture wild and dread; | |
| The seer, who watched them ride the storm, | |
| Saw through their faint and shadowy form | |
| The lightnings flash more red; | 70 |
| And still their ghastly roundelay | |
| Was of the coming battle-fray | |
| And of the destined dead. | |
| |
