Yet who, in Fortune's summer-shine

To waste life's longest term away, Would change that glorious dawn of thine, Though darken'd ere its noontide day?

Be thine the Tree whose dauntless boughs
Brave summer's drought and winter's gloom!
Rome bound with oak her patriots' brows,
As Albyn shadows Wogan's tomb.

Chap. xxix.

(11.)—" FOLLOW ME, FOLLOW ME." "WHO are dead?' said Waverley, forgetting the Incapacity of Davie to hold any connected discourse. "Baron-and Baillie-and Sanders Sandersonand Lady Rose, that sang sae sweet-A' dead and gane-dead and gane, (said Davie)—

But follow, follow me,

While glow-worms light the lea,

I'll show ye where the dead should be— Each in his shroud,

While winds pipe loud,

upon the oars of a galley, and which is therefore distinc! from the ordinary jorrams, or boat-songs. They were composed by the Family Bard upon the departure of the Earl of Seaforth, who was obliged to take refuge in Spain, after an unsuccessful effort at insurrection in favour of the Stuart family, in the year 1718.

FAREWELL to Mackenneth, great Earl of the North, The Lord of Lochcarron, Glenshiel, and Seaforth; To the Chieftain this morning his course who began, Launching forth on the billows his bark like a swan, For a far foreign land he has hoisted his sail, Farewell to Mackenzie, High Chief of Kintail!

O swift be the galley, and hardy her crew,
May her captain be skilful, her mariners true,
In danger undaunted, unwearied by toil,
Though the whirlwind should rise, and the ocean
should boil:

On the brave vessel's gunnel I drank his bonail,1
And farewell to Mackenzie, High Chief of Kintail!

Nor then, with more delighted ear,

The circle round her drew, Than ours, when gather'd round to hear Our songstress' at Saint Cloud.

Few happy hours poor mortals pass,Then give those hours their due, And rank among the foremost class Our evenings at Saint Cloud.

The Dance of Death.

8

1815.

I.

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

On the heights of Mount Saint John;
Tempest-clouds prolong'd the sway
Of timeless darkness over day;
Whirlwind, thunder-clap, and shower,
Mark'd it a predestined hour.
Broad and frequent through the night
Flash'd the sheets of levin-light;
Muskets, glancing lightnings back,
Show'd the dreary bivouac

Where the soldier lay,

Chill and stiff, and drench'd with rain,
Wishing dawn of morn again,

Though death should come with day.

II.

'Tis at such a tide and hour,

Wizard, witch, and fiend have power,

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

Among the sons of men ;-
Apart from Albyn's war-array,
'Twas then grey Allan sleepless lay;
Grey Allan, who, for many a day,

Had follow'd stout and stern,

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,
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 Bennevis hear with awe,
How, upon bloody Quatre-Bras,
Brave Cameron heard the wild hurra
Of conquest as he fell.1

III.

'Lone on the outskirts of the host,
The weary sentinel held post,
And heard, through darkness far aloof,
The frequent clang of courser's hoof,
Where held the cloak'd patrol their course,
And spurr'd 'gainst storm the swerving horse
But there are sounds in Allan's ear,
Patrol nor sentinel may hear,
And sights before his eye aghast
Invisible to them have pass'd,

When down the destined plain,
'Twixt Britain and the bands of France,
Wild as marsh-borne meteor's glance,
Strange phantoms wheel'd a revel danco,
And doom'd the future slain.-

Such forms were seen, such sounds were heard When Scotland's James his march prepared

For Flodden's fatal plain;6
Such, when he drew his ruthless sword,
As Choosers of the Slain, adored
The yet unchristen'd Dane.
An indistinct and phantom band,
They wheel'd their ring-dance hand in hand,
With gestures wild and dread;

The Seer, who watch'd them ride the storm,
Saw through their faint and shadowy form
The lightning's flash more red;
And still their ghastly roundelay
Was of the coming battle-fray,
And of the destined dead.

IV.

Song.

"Wheel the wild dance While lightnings glance,

And thunders rattle loud, And call the brave To bloody grave,

To sleep without a shroud.

These lines were written after an evening spent at Saint Cloud with the late Lady Alvanlev and her daughters, one of whom was the songstress alluded to in the text.

2 Originally published in 1815, in the Edinburgh Annual Register, vol. v.

3 MS.-" Dawn and darkness." 4 See note, ante, p. 505.

"

& MS." Oft came the clang," &c.

6 See ante, Marmion, canto 7., stanzas 24, 25, 26 and Appendix, Note 4 A., p. 165.