Wha will be a traitor knave?
Wha can fill a coward's grave ?
Wha sae base as be a slave ?
Let him turn and flee !
Wha for Scotland's king and law,
Freedom's sword will strongly draw
Freeman stand, or freeman fa',
Let him follow me!
By oppression's woes and pains,
By your sons in servile chains,
We will drain our dearest veins,
But they shall be free!
Lay the proud usurper low!
Tyrants fall in every foe!
Liberty 's in every blow!
Let us do or die!
THE way was long, the wind was cold,
The minstrel was infirm and old;
His withered cheek, and tresses grey,
Seemed to have known a better day;
The harp, his sole remaining joy,
Was carried by an orphan boy;
The last of all the bards was he,
Who sang of Border chivalry.
For, well-a-day! their date was fled,
His tuneful brethren all were dead;
And he, neglected and oppressed,
Wished to be with them, and at rest.
No more, on prancing palfrey borne,
He carolled, light as lark at morn;
No longer, courted and caressed,
High placed in hall a welcome guest,
He poured to lord and lady gay
The unpremeditated lay;
Old times were changed, old manners gone; A stranger filled the Stuarts' throne:
The bigots of the iron time
Had called his harmless art a crime.
A wandering harper, scorned and poor,
He begged his bread from door to door;
And tuned, to please a peasant's ear,
The harp a king had loved to hear.
He passed where Newark's stately tower
Looks out from Yarrow's birchen bower:
The minstrel gazed with wistful eye—
No humbler resting-place was nigh.
With hesitating step, at last
The embattled portal-arch he passed,
Whose ponderous grate and massy bar
Had oft rolled back the tide of war,
But never closed the iron door
Against the desolate and poor.
The Duchess marked his weary pace,
His timid mien, and reverend face,
And bade her page the menials tell,
That they should tend the old man well :
For she had known adversity,
Though born in such a high degree ;
In pride of power, in beauty's bloom,
Had wept o'er Monmouth's bloody tomb!
When kindness had his wants supplied
And the old man was gratified,
Began to rise his minstrel pride :
And, would the noble Duchess deign
To listen to an old man's strain.
Though stiff his hand, his voice though weak,
He thought even yet, the sooth to speak,
That, if she loved the harp to hear,
He could make music to her ear.
The humble boon was soon obtained ;
The aged minstrel audience gained;
But when he reached the room of state,
Where she with all her ladies sate,
Perchance he wished his boon denied ;
For when to tune his harp he tried,
His trembling hand had lost the ease
Which marks security to please :
And scenes, long past, of joy and pain,
Came wildering o'er his aged brain—
He tried to tune his harp in vain.
The pitying Duchess praised its chime,
And
gave
him heart, and gave him time,
Till every string's according glee
Was blended into harmony.
And then he said he would full fain
He could recal an ancient strain
He never thought to sing again.
It was not framed for village churls,
But for high dames and mighty earls s;
He had played it to King Charles the Good.
When he kept court in Holyrood;
And much he wished, yet feared, to try
The long-forgotten melody.
Amid the strings his fingers strayed
And an uncertain warbling made,
And oft he shook his hoary head;
But when he caught the measure wild,
The old man raised his face, and smiled;
And lighted up his faded eye
With all a poet's ecstasy!
In varying cadence, soft or strong,
He swept the sounding chords along ;
The present scene, the future lot,
His toils, his wants, were all forgot;
Cold diffidence and age's frost
In the full tide of song were lost;
Each blank in faithless memory void,
The poet's glowing thought supplied;
And while his harp responsive rung,
'Twas thus the LATEST MINSTREL sung.
OR, THE BATTLE OF OTTERBOURNE, BETWEEN DOUGLAS AND PERCY. A.D. 1388.
GOD prosper long our noble king,
Our lives and safeties all;
A woful hunting once there did
In Chevy Chase befal:
To drive the deer with hound and horn,
Ear Percy took his way;
The child may rue that is unborn
The hunting of that day.
The stout Earl of Northumberland
A vow to God did make,
His pleasure in the Scottish woods
Three summer days to take;
The chiefest harts in Chevy Chase
To kill and bear away.
These tidings to Earl Douglas came,
In Scotland where he lay ;
Who sent Earl Percy present word,
He would prevent his sport.
The English earl, not fearing this,
Did to the woods resort,
With fifteen hundred bowmen bold,
All chosen men of might,
Who knew full well, in time of need,
To aim their shafts aright.
The gallant greyhounds swiftly ran
To chase the fallow deer;
On Monday they began to hunt,
Ere daylight did appear.
And long before high noon, they had
A hundred fat bucks slain ;
Then, having dined, the drovers went
To rouse the deer again.
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