Campbell quitted Glasgow to remove into Argyleshire, where a situation
in a family of some note was offered and accepted by him. It was in
Argyleshire,[2] among the romantic mountains of the north, that his
poetical spirit increased, and the charms of verse took entire
possession of his mind. Many persons now alive remember him wandering
there alone by the torrent, or over the rugged heights of that wild
country, reciting the strains of other poets aloud, or silently
composing his own. Several of his pieces which he has rejected in his
collected works, are handed about in manuscript in Scotland. We quote
one of these wild compositions which has hitherto appeared only in
periodical publications.
[2] For a view of this retreat, see the MIRROR No. 337.
* * * * *
DIRGE OF WALLACE.
They lighted a taper at the dead of night,
And chanted their holiest hymn;
But her 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.
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