| |
| UP to the North by the Highland Railway; | |
| And down to the South by the Great Mid-Glen,— | |
| The lake-linked canal of Caledonia, | |
| Historic track of her hero men; | |
| |
| By the woods of Dunkeld and sweet Blair Athole, | 5 |
| By Garry’s flow and Tummel’s side; | |
| By haunted Urrard and Killiecrankie, | |
| Where Cavalier Claverhouse won and died;— | |
| |
| Mid the orchard blooms of sunny Forres, | |
| Where a princely fugitive hidden lay; | 10 |
| ’Mong the heather-bells of the Moor of Drummossie, | |
| That saw red Culloden’s fatal day; | |
| |
| By the rushing and roaring Fall of Foyers, | |
| Ever singing requiems in its flow; | |
| By the lordly ruins of Invergarry, | 15 |
| That Duke William only half laid low; | |
| |
| Nay, even by storied Inverlochy, | |
| That is ever bright with Montrose’s name, | |
| And through dark Glencoe, forever recalling | |
| The deadly assassin’s sword and flame,— | 20 |
| |
| What was it, through all, that walked beside me, | |
| Or sailed, or ran, or paused, or rode, | |
| As if some old dim and haunting Presence | |
| Had been by my Highland blood bestowed? | |
| |
| So clear sometimes was its outlined seeming, | 25 |
| That I half believed she had grown to two,— | |
| My winsome, brown-eyed Starlight lassie, | |
| With her tartan-plaid and her bonnet blue. | |
| |
| But the face was too pale and dim with sorrow; | |
| Too classic the shape, the form too tall. | 30 |
| No; something of old it was, half godlike, | |
| Like some Paladin dimmed by his coming fall. | |
| |
| Ah, I knew, at last! It was Charlie Stuart! | |
| Not as he landed on Moidart’s shore, | |
| With the memory of exiled years behind him, | 35 |
| And the hope of a kingdom on before; | |
| |
| But broken, as faithful Flora Macdonald | |
| Sheltered him far away in Skye; | |
| Rough-garbed, as when over moor and mountain | |
| He was forced alternate to hide and fly. | 40 |
| |
| But still, ah, still the Scots-people’s darling, | |
| The Chevalier, with his winsome smile, | |
| And the hope of a noble and kingly future, | |
| Though danger and want might exist the while. | |
| |
| “What is it,” I asked, when I knew the Presence, | 45 |
| And unbonneted stood to the princely wraith,— | |
| “What is it that holds, through so many ages, | |
| A loyalty useless, a hollow faith?” | |
| |
| Ah, again came the answer, “Beauty and Sorrow: | |
| The smile to win, with no hand to hold; | 50 |
| The might have been, waking endless pity: | |
| Given these, and the wondrous secret is told. | |
| |
| “No more, from the houses or hills they haunted, | |
| Go those away who have touched the heart: | |
| They win what success could never win them, | 55 |
| They hold what could never be held by art. | |
| |
| “The Babes in the Tower; young murthered Arthur; | |
| Lady Jane, who died for an unsought crown; | |
| The Orleans Maid, falling, madly heroic; | |
| The Scottish Queen by her foes crushed down,— | 60 |
| |
| “Ah, these have a place beyond their deserving; | |
| Their stories linger when brighter fade; | |
| And on every spot where they lived and suffered | |
| There walks, through all coming time, a shade.” | |
| |
| O Charlie Stuart! poor Charlie Stuart, | 65 |
| That you missed of a crown of gold and gems; | |
| But blest, among men, to wear forever | |
| The proudest of mental diadems!— | |
| |
| To be ever loved; to be ever pitied; | |
| To be ever gallant and fresh and young; | 70 |
| To keep, through the ages, a living presence, | |
| With a song and a sigh on every tongue! | |
| |
