The gentleness of one that's brave.
Yet on that monumental stone
More feats of high renown are shown,
Where he a prisoner and enchained,
At last his noblest laurels gained:
Lived to avenge each treacherous wrong,
And triumph when he suffered long.
There, too, his brilliant tasks to cope,
'Tis told he seized the Cape of Hope;
And sad Corunna's bloody shore
But added to his fame the more.
A widow's love the warrior praised,
A widow's love the column raised;
And yet that column tall and bold,
Traced in the lines of Egypt old,
Arises as a new cut stone
Amid the dust of ages gone;
For while it tells of yesterday,
It stands upon the summit grey
Where stately tower and donjon stern
Were keep and tomb of fair Strathearn;
Where Wallace oft his prowess tried,
And royal Bruce in valour vied.
Talk we of Bruce? By yon dark wood
The Comyn's ancient fortress stood--
That traitor whose unhappy fate
Still on the monarch's conscience sate,
And urged him in a zeal divine
To send his heart to Palestine.

See where the waters dash aside,
And swiftly round the thicket glide,
Where mossy crag and fan-like bough
Inshade the torrent far below.
Within a towery wilderness
Of nature's wildest gorgeousness,
There rose in architecture quaint
The cell of Strowan's valiant saint--
A soldier-priest whose claymore long
Was more persuasive than his tongue;
Here stands his cross, there flows his well,
Here still is seen his holy hell;
Here, ivy-mantled, still remain
The ruins of the ancient fane,
Where once to heaven the anthem rose,
And silent now the loved repose.

On every side each scene has store
Of song and legendary lore;
Each stream has still its story true,
Each height some bloody conflict knew;
Each crag must give its meed to fame,
And consecrate a hero's name.
High o'er the rest, all bleak and dern,
Moulders the royal Kenneth's cairn,
Who for his crown his good sword bared,
And fell in fight at Monzievaird.
Even in their church, the doom of fire
Consumed the clan of Ochtertyre;
And in his home across the plain,
Old Drummond-Ernoch was slain;
Sons of the mist avenged their dead,
And bore away his grisly head.

Old tales like these, old legends true,
Spring up where'er I turn my view--
From Turret's glen and brawling wave,
From Tosach's keep and fairy grave,
From Ochtertyre's unfading