Poems (Piatt)/Volume 2/A Triumph of Travel
A TRIUMPH OF TRAVEL.AT EDINBURGH.
There rose the tragic palace towers Against the moon. (The tale was true!)The Prince's Gardens faint with flowers And still with statue-spectres grew.
There, on its rock, the Castle lay, An awful shadow-shape forlorn,Among the night-lamps, and, by day— The place where James the First was born.
There, for the Covenanters' sake, One haunts the grasses of Grey Friars;There grim John Knox had loved to shake His right hand full of ghostly fires.
There, changed to marble, Walter Scott Received the world. And Burns of Ayr,With all his loves and debts forgot, A bronze immortal met you there.
No whit the seven-years' stranger cared; As under gables high and stillThrough immemorial dust he fared, He spoke his heart out with a will:
"I'm tired of Holyrood, that's what! And all the other things," he said;"There 's nothing in it! She is not;— I mean Queen Mary. She is dead.
"I'm glad I did just one thing there." (In vain they showed him "Rizzio's bluid.")"I put my hand on every chair That said 'Don't Touch' at Holyrood!"