THE

Poetical Works

OF

ISAAC WILKINSON,

COCKERMOUTH.

Commerce adieu,----I woo a sterner bride;
The fierce Bellona calls me to her side.
Harsh is the music of our marriage strain!
It rolls in thunder from Culloden plain!

The beauty is proud of the conquest she gains,
And the humblest of poets is proud of his strains;
Then forgive me, if something like pride should be mine,
When I write out the couplet and measure the line.

Cockermouth:

PRINTED FOR THE AUTHOR BY

EDWARD BANKS.

1824.

2 JUL 1943

POEMS.

CULLODEN,

To the Highland Society of

LONDON.

Sons of Caledonia's Isles,

Bravest on the land and waves;-
Yon massy rocks, the funeral piles,
That rise above your father's graves.

THE HOUSE OF STUART, long time on the wane,
Their hopes all perish'd on Culloden plain;
Where many a Highland youth, in manly bloom,
Bellona sent to tread the Stygian gloom;—
She mounts her iron car, and at her wheels
In vain the mother weeps, and children kneels;
The bugle sounded, by her order blown,
The martial summons on the winds was borne;
Through all the Isles the well known echo spread,
And each bold chief his feudal tenants led,

Still fondly thought, respect for Stuart's name,
Would once more place them o'er the proud domain;
But James's flight, so fatal was the stain,

That every effort fruitless prov'd and vain.

The fierce Lochiel, his vassal clan commands,
And bids the minstrels call Lochaber's bands;
The minstrels chanted, in a warlike strain,
The Songs of Ossian, to the mountain swain,
How their fore-fathers bloody fields had won,
Led on by Oscar, Ossian's favourite son,
And how Fingal had raised the nation's fame,
By his fierce combats with the barbarous Dane,
A savage horde of rambling thieves, who made
War like Algiers, plundering was their trade;
They sung, how Malcolm led his warlike powers,
From Tay's green banks, to Alnwick's lofty towers;
And how Kirkaldy, gain'd immortal fame,
By his attachment to the Stuart name.—

The Swain enraptur'd, hears with fierce delight,
How Bruce and Wallace won the hardy fight,
When England's legions oft were forc'd to yield
The palm of victory, in the hostile field;
And how bold Douglas led his martial train
To combat Percy on the Cheviot plain;
Red drops of blood were sprinkl'd o'er the field,
When night descending, spread her ample shield;
Of all the heroes who went to that bourn,
Few were the number destin'd to return.
Discord alone, of all the Demon train,
Wav'd her red torch upon that direful plain.

In milder strains, they chant a plaintive lay,
The sad disasters of that fatal day;
A day o'er which humanity long mourn'd,
While Caledonia wept her youth inurn'd;
Long did she mourn that hapless, fatal blow,
The field of Falkirk laid her glories low,
(A spear, inverted on a sable shield,