r brow and her bosom were damp with affright
Her eye was all sleepless and dim!
And the lady of Elderslie wept for her lord,
When a death-watch beat in her lonely room,
When her curtain had shook of its own accord;
And the raven had flapp'd at her window-board,
To tell of her warrior's doom!
Now sing you the death-song, and loudly pray
For the soul of my knight so dear;
And call me a widow this wretched day,
Since the warning of God is here!
For night-mare rides on my strangled sleep:
The lord of my bosom is doomed to die:
His valorous heart they have wounded deep;
And the blood-red tears shall his country weep,
For Wallace of Elderslie!
Yet knew not his country that ominous hour,
Ere the loud matin bell was rung,
That a trumpet of death on an English tower
Had the dirge of her champion sung!
When his dungeon light look'd dim and red
On the high-born blood of a martyr slain,
No anthem was sung at his holy death-bed;
No weeping was there when his bosom bled--
And his heart was rent in twain!
Oh, it was not thus when his oaken spear
Was true to that knight forlorn;
And the hosts of a thousand were scatter'd like deer,
At the blast of the hunter's horn;
When he strode on the wreck of each well-fought field
With the yellow-hair'd chiefs of his native land;
For his lance was not shiver'd on helmet or shield--
And the sword that seem'd fit for Archangel to wield,
Was light in his terrible hand!
Yet bleeding and bound, though her Wallace wight
For his long-lov'd country die,
The bugle ne'er sung to a braver knight
Than Wallace of Elderslie!
But the day of his glory shall never depart,
His head unentomb'd shall with glory be balm'd,
From its blood-streaming altar his spirit shall start;
Though the raven has fed on his mouldering heart,
A nobler was never embalm'd!
From Argyleshire, where his residence was not a protracted one, Campbell
removed to Edinburgh. There he soon became introduced to some of the
first men of the age, whose friendship and kindness could not fail
to stimulate a mind like that of Campbell. He became intimate with the
late Dugald Stewart; and almost every other leading professor of the
University of Edinburgh was his friend. While in Edinburgh, he brought
out his celebrated "Pleasures of Hope," at the age of twenty-one. It is
perhaps not too much to say of this
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