Page:Old Castles.djvu/12

To longings once again for its true rest,
To thoughts of peace, perchance by crowns unspoiled.
She was thy captive sad, this lady fair,
And thou hadst many captives in those days,
Noteless and notable; thy dungeons old,
Close cavern’d in from all the sun’s sweet rays,
And all devoid of lightest breath of air,
Have borne upon their basements dank and cold
The wearying form of many a child of care.
Here came the Jacobite still unsubdued,
A patriot brave, and all devoid of fear,
His heart still rising, neither chain nor cell
His hopes despoiling; long the terror here
Of all this Border Country, his old feud
Oft ending in vast file on Gallows Hill,
As did the brave McDonald, long renowned
As the McIvor of the Scottish tale.
And in these times, and often with these found,
Nor short of them in resolution hale,
Was the moss trooper–brigand most profound,
Yet something more than brigand all the while.
His was the feud of races; clan with clan–
Stern hater of the British name and isle.
His mode of action still the good old plan,
That they should take who have the greatest power,
And they who can should keep–a rule which wrought
Full often his own ruin; hour by hour
O’er field and fell and moorland waste and wild
The war note rising, and the blood-hounds’ yell.
Such were the means the troubled country sought
To capture him; and often he was brought
In chainéd bands, to die in durance here;