James and Mary Ford, eds. Every Day in the Year. 1902.
August 23The Death of Wallace
By Robert Southey (1774–1843)
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He goes, the rebel Wallace goes to death;
At length the traitor meets the traitor’s doom,
Joy, joy in London now!
His strong right arm unweaponed and in chains,
And garlanded around his helmless head
The laurel wreath of scorn.
Who in the field had fled before his sword,
Who at the name of Wallace once grew pale
And faltered out a prayer.
That only beams with patient courage now;
Yes! they can look upon those manly limbs,
Defenceless now and bound.
As he beheld the pomp of infamy;
Nor one ungoverned feeling shook those limbs,
When the last moment came.
Was by their legal cruelty revived;
What though ingenious vengeance lengthened life
To feel protracted death?
Grasped in his living breast the heaving heart?—
In the last agony, the last sick pang,
Wallace had comfort still.
Done for his country in the embattled field;
He thought of that good cause for which he died,
And it was joy in death.
Cambria is fallen, and Scotland’s strength is crushed;
On Wallace, on Llewellyn’s mangled limbs,
The fowls of heaven have fed.
Go Edward, full of glory to thy grave!
The weight of patriot blood upon thy soul,
Go Edward, to thy God!