end of the bloody stair,
Whose steps wend downward to the house of prayer;
Gone is the priest, and they who worshipp'd seem
Phantoms to us--a dream within a dream;
Earth hath o'ermantled each memorial stone,
And from their tombs the very dust is gone;
All perish'd, all forgotten, like the ray
Which gilt yon orient hill-tops yesterday;
All nameless, save mayhap one stalwart knight,
Who fell with Graeme in Falkirk's bloody fight--
Bonkill's stout Stewart,[8] whose heroic tale
Oft circles yet the peasant's evening fire,
And how he scorn'd to fly, and how he bled--
He, whose effigies in St Mary's choir,
With planted heel upon the lion's head,
Now rests in marble mail.
Yet still remains the small dark narrow room,
Where the third Robert, yielding to the gloom
Of his despair, heart-broken, laid him down,
Refusing food, to die; and to the wall
Turn'd his determined face, unheeding all,
And to his captive boy-prince left his crown.[9]
Alas! thy solitary hawthorn-tree,
Four-centuried, and o'erthrown, is but of thee
A type, majestic ruin: there it lies,
And annually puts on its May-flower bloom,
To fill thy lonely courts with bland perfume,
Yet lifts no more its green head to the skies;[10]
The last lone living thing around that knew
Thy glory, when the dizziness and din
Of thronging life o'erflow'd thy halls within,
And o'er thy top St Andrew's banner flew.

V.

Farewell! Elysian island of the west,
Still be thy gardens brighten'd by the rose
Of a perennial spring, and winter's snows
Ne'er chill the warmth of thy maternal breast!
May calms for ever sleep around thy coast,
And desolating storms roll far away,
While art with nature vies to form thy bay,
Fairer than that which Naples makes her boast!
Green link between the High-lands and the Low--
Thou gem, half claim'd by earth, and half by sea--
May blessings, like a flood, thy homes o'erflow,
And health--though elsewhere lost--be found in thee!
May thy bland zephyrs to the pallid cheek
Of sickness ever roseate hues restore,
And they who shun the rabble and the roar
Of the wild world, on thy delightful shore
Obtain that soft seclusion which they seek!
Be this a stranger's farewell, green Byrone,
Who ne'er hath trod thy heathery heights before,
And ne'er may see thee more
After yon autumn sun hath westering gone;
Though oft, in pensive mood, when far away,
'Mid city multitudes, his thoughts will stray
T