Sweet the laverock's note and lang,
Liltin' wildly up the glen;

And aye the o'erword o' the sang

Is "Will he no' come back again?"

Whene'er I hear the blackbird sing
Unto the evenin' sinkin' down,

Or merle that makes the woods to ring,
To me they hae nae ither soun'
Than-

Will he no' come back again?
Will he no' come back again?
Better lo'ed he canna be—

Will he no' come back again?

Anon.

A Jacobite's Epitaph

O my true king I offered free from stain
Courage and faith; vain faith, and courage

vain.

For him I threw lands, honours, wealth away, And one dear hope, that was more prized than they.

For him I languished in a foreign clime,

Grey-haired with sorrow in my manhood's prime;
Heard on Lavernia Scargill's whispering trees,
And pined by Arno for my lovelier Tees;
Beheld each night my home in fevered sleep,
Each morning started from the dream to weep;
Till God, who saw me tried too sorely, gave
The resting-place I asked, an early grave.

O thou, whom chance leads to this nameless stone,
From that proud country which was once mine own,

By those white cliffs I never more must see,
By that dear language which I spake like thee,
Forget all feuds, and shed one English tear
O'er English dust. A broken heart lies here.

A Jacobite's Exile

Macaulay.

HE weary day rins down and dies,
The weary night wears through:
And never an hour is fair wi' flower,
And never a flower wi' dew.

I would the day were night for me,

I would the night were day:

For then would I stand in my ain fair land,
As now in dreams I may.

O lordly flow the Loire and Seine,
And loud the dark Durance :
But bonnier shine the braes of Tyne
Than a' the fields of France;
And the waves of Till that speak sae still
Gleam goodlier where they glance.

O weel were they that fell fighting
On dark Drumossie's day:

They keep their hame ayont the faem
And we die far away.

O sound they sleep, and saft, and deep,
But night and day wake we;
And ever between the sea banks green
Sounds loud the sundering sea.

And ill we sleep, sae sair we weep,
But sweet and fast sleep they;

And the mool that haps them roun' and laps them

Is e'en their country's clay;

But the land we tread that are not dead

Is strange as night by day.

Strange as night in a strange man's sight,
Though fair as dawn it be:

For what is here that a stranger's cheer
Should yet wax blithe to see?

The hills stand steep, the dells lie deep,
The fields are green and gold:

The hill-streams sing, and the hill-sides ring,
As ours at home of old.

But hills and flowers are nane of ours,

And ours are oversea:

And the kind strange land whereon we stand,
It wotsna what were we

Or ever we came, wi' scathe and shame,
To try what end might be.

Scathe, and shame, and a waefu' name,
And a weary time and strange,

Have they that seeing a weird for dreeing
Can die, and cannot change.

Shame and scorn may we thole that mourn,
Though sair be they to dree:

But ill may we bide the thoughts we hide,
Mair keen than wind and sea.

Ill may we thole the night's watches,

And ill the weary day:

And the dreams that keep the gates of sleep,

A waefu' gift gie they;

For the sangs they sing us, the sights they bring us, The morn blaws all away.

On Aikenshaw the sun blinks braw,
The burn rins blithe and fain:
There's nought wi' me I wadna gie
To look thereon again.

On Keilder-side the wind blaws wide:
There sounds nae hunting-horn
That rings sae sweet as the winds that beat
Round banks where Tyne is born.

The Wansbeck sings with all her springs,
The bents and braes give ear;

But the wood that rings wi' the sang she sings

I may not see nor hear;

For far and far thae blithe burns are,

And strange is a' thing near.

The light there lightens, the day there brightens, The loud wind there lives free:

Nae light comes nigh me or wind blaws by me That I wad hear or see.

But O gin I were there again,

Afar ayont the faem,

Cauld and dead in the sweet, saft bed

That haps my sires at hame!

We'll see nae mair the sea banks fair,
And the sweet grey gleaming sky,
And the lordly strand of Northumberland,

And the goodly towers thereby;

And none shall know but the winds that blow

The graves wherein we lie.

Swinburne.

Three Portraits of Prince Charles

B

(1731)

EAUTIFUL face of a child,

Lighted with laughter and glee, Mirthful, and tender, and wild, My heart is heavy for thee!

(1744)

Beautiful face of a youth,

As an eagle poised to fly forth,

To the old land loyal of truth,

To the hills and the sounds of the North:

Fair face, daring and proud,

Lo! the shadow of doom even now,

The fate of thy line, like a cloud,

Rests on the grace of thy brow!

(1773)

Cruel and angry face,

Hateful and heavy with wine,
Where are the gladness, the grace,
The beauty, the mirth that were thine?

Ah, my Prince, it were well,-

Hadst thou to the gods been dear,-
To have fallen where Keppoch fell,
With the war-pipe loud in thine ear!

To have died with never a stain

On the fair White Rose of Renown,

To have fallen, fighting in vain,

For thy father, thy faith, and thy crown!
More than thy marble pile,

With its women weeping for thee,
Were to dream in thine ancient isle,
To the endless dirge of the sea!
(B 838)

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