Stedman and Hutchinson, comps. A Library of American Literature:
An Anthology in Eleven Volumes. 1891.
Vols. IX–XI: Literature of the Republic, Part IV., 1861–1889
The Trial of the Dead
By Lydia Huntley Sigourney (1791–1865)T
Where, with a stern command,
The Earl of Huntley ranged his host
Upon their native strand.
They at his summons came,
A stalwart band of fearless men,
Who counted war a game.
Fierce Murray northward sped,
And rushed his envied foe to meet
In battle sharp and dread.
Like waves when tempests blow,
The slogan-music high in air,
The sound of groans below.
Till on the ensanguined ground
The noble Gordon lifeless lay,
Transpierced with many a wound.
“I see a dusky cloud,
And there, behold! comes floating high
Earl Huntley’s banner proud.”
Involved her aching sight;
’Twas but an autumn-bough that mocked
Her chieftain’s pennon bright.
Her head upon her knee,
And murmured low in hollow tone,
“He’ll ne’er come back to thee.”
Steed-tramp and pibroch-roar?
As when the victor-surf doth tread
Upon a rocky shore?”
That woman wise and hoar,
But whispered in her troubled soul,
“Thy Lord returns no more!
A scattered host I see,”
And, straining wild, her sunken eye
Gazed out on vacancy.
Stole with despairing tread,
While to the vaults of Holyrood
Was borne their chieftain dead.
While lawless vassals jeered,
Nor spared to mock the haughty brow
Whose living frown they feared.
At no rich shrine inurned,
But heavenward, as the warrior fell,
His noble forehead turned.
To cot in lowly dell,
O’er Corrichie’s disastrous day
The tears of Scotland fell,
With feudal pomp was graced,
And at the bar, in princely robes,
A muffled chieftain placed.
Though throngs beside him pressed;
The Gordon plume his brow adorned,
Its tartan wrapped his breast.
High-treason taints thy name;
For God, and for thy country’s cause,
Defend thine ancient fame;
Heaven’s truth unblenching tell!”
No lip he moved, no hand he raised,
And dire that silence fell.
Then came the sentence drear:
“Foul traitor to thy queen and realm,
Our laws denounce thee here.”
They bared his helmed head,
Though the pale judges inly quaked
Before the ghastly dead.
Or man’s avenging rod,
Who, in the land of souls, doth bide
The audit of his God.
As from sepulchral gloom,
And sternest veterans shrank to breathe
The vapor of the tomb.
With hateful pageant o’er,
They yield him to his waiting friends
Who throng the palace door.
Unresting day and night,
To where mid Elgin’s towers they mark
The fair cathedral’s height.
Beneath its hallowed shade,
With midnight torch and chanted dirge,
Their fallen chief they laid,
Whose locks of silver hue
Were stained, as Avon’s swan hath sung,
With murder’s bloody dew.
Of ancient fame and power,
No more a valiant host to guide
In battle’s stormy hour.
Until that day of dread,
Which to eternity consigns
The trial of the dead.