THE

DANCE OF DEATH.

I.

NIGHT and morning were at meeting

Over Waterloo ;

Cocks had sung their earliest greeting,

Faint and low they crew,

For no paly beam yet shone

On the heights of Mount Saint John;

Tempest-clouds prolong'd the sway

Of timeless darkness over day;

Whirlwind, thunder-clap, and shower,

Mark'd it a predestined hour.

Broad and frequent through the night

Flash'd the sheets of levin-light;

Musquets, glancing lightnings back,

Shew'd the dreary bivouack

Where the soldier lay,

Chill and stiff, and drench'd with rain,

Wishing dawn of morn again

Though death should come with day.

II.

'Tis at such a tide and hour,

Wizard, witch, and fiend have power,

And ghastly forms through mist and shower

Gleam on the gifted ken;

And then the affrighted prophet's ear

Drinks whispers strange of fate and fear,

Presaging death and ruin near

Among the sons of men ;

Apart from Albyn's war-array,

'Twas then grey Allan sleepless lay;

Grey Allan, who, for many a day,

Had follow'd stout and stern,

Where, through battle's rout and reel,

Storm of shot and hedge of steel,

Led the grandson of Lochiel,

Valiant Fassiefern.

Through steel and shot he leads no more,

Low-laid 'mid friends' and foemen's gore

But long his native lake's wild shore,

And Sunart rough, and high Ardgower,
And Morvern long shall tell,

And proud Bennevis hear with awe,

How, upon bloody Quatre-Bras,

Brave Cameron heard the wild hurra

Of conquest as he fell.

III.

'Lone on the outskirts of the host,

The weary sentinel held post,

And heard, through darkness far aloof,

The frequent clang of courser's hoof,

Where held the cloak'd patrole their course,

And spurr'd 'gainst storm the swerving horse;

But there are sounds in Allan's ear,

Patrole nor sentinel may hear,

And sights before his eye aghast

Invisible to them have pass'd,

When down the destined plain

'Twixt Britain and the bands of France,

Wild as marsh-borne meteors glance,

Strange phantoms wheel'd a revel dance,

And doom'd the future slain.

Such forms were seen, such sounds were heard,

When Scotland's James his march prepared

For Flodden's fatal plain;

Such, when he drew his ruthless sword,

As Chusers of the Slain, adored

The yet unchristen'd Dane.

An indistinct and phantom band,

They wheel'd their ring-dance hand in hand,

With gesture wild and dread;

The Seer, who watch'd them ride the storm,

Saw through their faint and shadowy form

The lightning's flash more' red;

And still their ghastly roundelay

Was of the coming battle-fray,

And of the destined dead.