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THE

LAY

OF

THE LAST MINSTREL.

CANTO FOURTH.

THE

LAY OF THE LAST MINSTREL.

CANTO FOURTH.

I.

SWEET Teviot! on thy silver tide,
The glaring bale-fires blaze no more ;
No longer steel-clad warriors ride

Along thy wild and willowed shore;
Where'er thou wind'st by dale or hill,
All, all is peaceful, all is still,

As if thy waves, since Time was born, Since first they rolled their way to Tweed,

Had only heard the shepherd's reed,

Nor started at the bugle-horn.

II.

Unlike the tide of human time,

Which, though it change in ceaseless flow, Retains each grief, retains each crime,

Its earliest course was doomed to know;
And, darker as it downward bears,
Is stained with past and present tears.
Low as that tide has ebbed with me,

It still reflects to memory's eye
The hour, my brave, my only boy,
Fell by the side of great Dundee,
Why, when the volleying musket played
Against the bloody Highland blade,
Why was not I beside him laid !—
Enough he died the death of fame;
Enough—he died with conquering Græme.

III.

Now over Border dale and fell,

Full wide and far, was terror spread;
For pathless marsh, and mountain cell,
The peasant left his lowly shed.

The frightened flocks and herds were pent
Beneath the peel's rude battlement;

And maids and matrons dropped the tear,
While ready warriors seized the spear.
From Branksome's towers, the watchman's eye
Dun wreaths of distant smoke can spy,
Which, curling in the rising sun,

Shewed southern ravage was begun.

IV.

Now loud the heedful gate-ward cried—

66

Prepare ye all for blows and blood!

Wat Tinlinn, from the Liddle-side,

Comes wading through the flood.

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