THE LAY OF THE LAST MINSTREL. CANTO FOURTH. I. SWEET Teviot! on thy silver tide The glaring bale-fires blaze no more; No longer steel-clad warriors ride -Along thy wild and willowed shore; Where'er thou wind'st by dale or hill, All, all is peaceful, all is still, As if thy waves, since Time was born, Since first they rolled upon the Tweed; Had only heard the shepherd's reed, Nor started at the bugle-horn. II. Unlike the tide of human time, Which, though it change in ceaseless flow, Retains each grief, retains each crime, Its earliest course was doomed to know, And, darker as it downward bears, Is stained with past and present tears. It still reflects to memory's eye The hour, my brave, my only boy, Fell by the side of great Dundee. Why, when the volleying musket played Why was not I beside him laid! Enough he died the death of fame; Enough he died with conquering Græme. To muse o'er rivalries of yore, And grieve that I shall hear no more The strains, with envy heard before; For, with my minstrel brethren fled, He paused: the listening dames again With many a word of kindly cheer,— Of towers, which harbour now the hare ; Of manners, long since changed and gone; Of chiefs, who under their gray stone |