Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
England: Vols. I–IV. 1876–79.
The Dark Wagon
By David Macbeth Moir (1798–1851)T
The winds through high Dumbarton sighed,
When to the trumpet’s call replied
The deep drum from the square;
And in the midnight’s misty shade,
With helm, and cloak, and glancing blade,
Two hundred horsemen stood arrayed
Beneath the torch’s glare.
They took their station, horse and man.
The outer gateway’s bolts withdrawn,
In haste the drawbridge fell;
And out, with iron clatter, went
That sullen midnight armament,
Alone the leader knew where bent,
With what—he might not tell.
The blinded wagon thundered on,
And, save of hoof-tramp, sound was none:
Hurriedly on they scour
The eastward track—away—away;
To none they speak, brook no delay,
Till farm-cocks heralded the day,
And hour had followed hour.
Westward the smoke of Glasgow dies.—
The pastoral hills of Campsie rise
Northward in morning’s air,—
By Kirkintilloc, Cumbernold,
And Castlecary, on they hold,
Till Lythgo shows, in mirrored gold,
Its palaced loch so fair.
Onwards the ponderous van rebounds
Mid the grim squadron, which surrounds
Its path with spur and spear.
Thy shrine, Dumanie, fades on sight,
And, seen from Niddreff’s hazelly height,
The Forth, amid its islands bright,
Shimmers with lustre clear.
Across the furzy hills of Braid,
By Craig-Milor, through Wymet’s glade
To Inneresc they wound;
Then o’er the Garlton crags afar,
Where, oft a check to England’s war,
Cospatrick’s stronghold of Dunbar
In proud defiance frowned.
The password given, o’er bridge of Tweed
The cavalcade, with slackened speed,
Rolled on, like one from nightmare freed,
That draws an easier breath;
But o’er and round it hung the gloom
As of some dark, mysterious doom,—
Shadows cast forward from the tomb,
And auguries of death.
And, on the far horizon blue,
Faded her last, dear hills,—the mew
Screamed to its sea-isle near.
As day-beams ceased the west to flout,
Each after each the stars came out,
Like camp-fires heaven’s high hosts about,
With lustre calm and clear.
Northumbrian, and of quaint renown,
Before the morning star went down,
With thunderous reel they hied;
While from the lattices aloof,
Of many an angled, gray-stone roof,
Rose sudden heads, as sound of hoof
And wheel to southward died.
Sweetly the chimes for matin prayer
Melted upon the dewy air
From Hexham’s holy pile;
But, like the adder deaf, no sound,
Or stern or sweet, an echo found
Mid that dark squadron, as it wound
Still onward, mile on mile.
Bright are thy shadowy forest-bowers,
Fair Ashby-de-la-Zouche! with flowers;
The wild-deer in its covert cowers,
And, from its pine-tree old,
The startled cushat, in unrest,
Circles around its airy nest,
As forward, on its route unblest,
Aye on that wagon rolled.
And many a keep of old renown,
That grimly watched o’er dale and down,
They passed unheeding by;
Prone from the rocks the waters streamed,
And, mid the yellow harvests, gleamed
The reapers’ sickles, but all seemed
Mere pictures to the eye.
Hundreds and hamlets far from sight,
By lonely granges through the night
They camped; and, ere the morning light
Crimsoned the orient, they,
By royal road or baron’s park,
Waking the watchful ban-dog’s bark,
Before the first song of the lark,
Were on their southward way.
Without a halt they hurried on,
Nor paused by that fair cross of stone.
Now for the first time seen,
(For death’s dark billows overwhelm
Both jewelled braid and knightly helm!)
Raised, by the monarch of the realm,
To Eleanor his queen.
Since crossing Tweed, with fresh relay
Ever in wait, their forward way
That cavalcade had held;
Now joy! for on the weary wights
Loomed London from the Hampstead heights,
As, by the opal morning, night’s
Thin vapors were dispelled.
And bucklered arm and trellised breast,
Closer around their charge they pressed,—
On whirled, with livelier roll,
The wheels begirt with prancing feet,
And arms, a serried mass complete,
Until, by many a stately street,
They reached their destined goal.
Struck to the heart like sudden fear;
“Hope flies from all that enter here!”
Seemed graven on its crest.
The moat o’erpassed, at warn of bell,
Down thundering the portcullis fell,
And clanged the studded gates,—a knell
Despairing and unblest.
Heaven’s high decrees, and work its will,—
Ye thunderbolts! launched forth to kill,—
Where was it then ye slept,
When, foe-bemocked, in prison square,
To death foredoomed, with dauntless air,
From out that van, a shackled man,
Sir William Wallace stept!