Fugitive Poetry. 1600–1878/Linlithgow Palace

Linlithgow Palace.

(Birthplace of Mary Stuart.)

How still and deep is the awful sleep That, like mist on a sea-girt isle,Broods o'er thy halls and thy crumbling walls, Thou deserted and lonely pile.

Pale as the gloom of the cheerless tomb Is the light that shadows thee o'er,And cold as death seems the murmuring breath That sweeps by thy turrets so hoar.

And yet from thee, all strong and all free, Long ago rose the sounds of mirth,The merry laugh that, lightly as chaff, The winds bore to many a hearth.

And sweetly there, with her flowing hair, In her childhood's beautiful grace,Fair as a flower in its opening hour Shone the star of the Stuart race.

But the joyous laugh in its cenotaph Slumbers still with the wassail's mirth,And lady bright and true-hearted knight Have long passed away from the earth.

The flag that waved when the loud wind raved On thy turrets is seen no more;The lights are fled, the bright fire is dead, All is changed since the days of yore.