In

The quarry to their hut they drew.

gray Glenfinlas' deepest nook

50

The solitary cabin stood,

Fast by Moneira's sullen brook,

wood.

On me the Seer's sad spirit came.

The last dread curse of angry heaven, With ghastly sights and sounds of woe To dash each glimpse of joy was given — The gift the future ill to know.

"The bark thou saw'st, yon summer morn,
So gayly part from Oban's bay,
My eye beheld her dashed and torn
Far on the rocky Colonsay.

100

109

Thou only saw'st their tartans wave
As down Benvoirlich's side they wound,
Heard'st but the pibroch answering brave
To many a target clanking round.

'I heard the groans, I marked the tears,
I saw the wound his bosom bore,
When on the serried Saxon spears
He poured his clan's resistless roar.

'And thou, who bidst me think of bliss,
And bidst my heart awake to glee,
And court like thee the wanton kiss
That heart, O Ronald, bleeds for thee! 12

'I see the death-damps chill thy brow:
I hear thy Warning Spirit cry;
The corpse-lights dance - they 're gone,
and now-

No more is given to gifted eye!'

'Alone enjoy thy dreary dreams,
Sad prophet of the evil hour!
Say, should we scorn joy's transient beams
Because to-morrow's storm may lour?

129

'Or false or sooth thy words of woe, Clangillian's Chieftain ne'er shall fear; His blood shall bound at rapture's glow, Though doomed to stain the Saxon spear.

'E'en now, to meet me in yon dell,

My Mary's buskins brush the dew.'
He spoke, nor bade the chief farewell,
But called his dogs and gay withdrew.

Within an hour returned each hound,
In rushed the rousers of the deer;
They howled in melancholy sound,
Then closely couched beside the Seer. 140

No Ronald yet, though midnight came,
And sad were Moy's prophetic dreams,
As, bending o'er the dying flame,
He fed the watch-fire's quivering gleams.

Sudden the hounds erect their ears,

And sudden cease their moaning howl,

レー He muttered thrice Saint Oran's rhyme, And thrice Saint Fillan's powerful prayer;

Then turned him to the eastern clime,
And sternly shook his coal-black hair. 220

And, bending o'er his harp, he flung

His wildest witch-notes on the wind; And loud and high and strange they rung, As many a magic change they find.

Tall waxed the Spirit's altering form,
Till to the roof her stature grew;
Then, mingling with the rising storm,
With one wild yell away she flew.

Rain beats, hail rattles, whirlwinds tear :
The slender hut in fragments flew ; 230
But not a lock of Moy's loose hair

Was waved by wind or wet by dew.

O hone a rie'! O hone a rie'!

The pride of Albin's line is o'er ! And fallen Glenartney's stateliest tree; We ne'er shall see Lord Ronald more!

THE EVE OF SAINT JOHN

This ballad was written in the autumn of 1799 at Mertoun House, and was first published in Monk Lewis's Tales of Wonder. Lockhart points out that it is the first of Scott's original pieces in which he uses the measure of his own favorite minstrels. The ballad was written at the playful request of Scott of Harden, who was the owner of the tower of Smailholm, when Walter Scott begged him not to destroy it.

THE Baron of Smaylho'me rose with day, He spurred his courser on,