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THE

DANCE OF DEATH.

22

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 prolonged the sway
Of timeless darkness over day;
Whirlwind, thunder-clap, and shower,
Mark'd it a predestined hour.

Broad and frequent through the night
Flashed the sheets of levin-light;
Musquets, glancing lightnings back,
Show'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 gray Allan sleepless lay;
Gray 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,

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