Classic Poem

A FRAGMENT

When fruitful Clydesdale's apple-bowers
Are mellowing in the noon;
When sighs round Pembroke's ruined towers
The sultry breath of June;

When Clyde, despite his sheltering wood,
Must leave his channel dry,
And vainly o'er the limpid flood
The angler guides his fly;

If chance by Bothwell's lovely braes
A wanderer thou hast been,
Or hid thee from the summer's blaze
In Blantyre's bowers of green,

Full where the copsewood opens wild
Thy pilgrim step hath staid,
Where Bothwell's towers in ruin piled
O'erlook the verdant glade;

And many a tale of love and fear
Hath mingled with the scene —
Of Bothwell's banks that bloomed so dear,
And Bothwell's bonny Jean.

O, if with rugged minstrel lays
Unsated be thy car,
And thou of deeds of other days
Another tale wilt hear, —

Then all beneath the spreading beech,
Flung careless on the lea,
The Gothic muse the tale shall teach
Of Bothwell's sisters three.

Wight Wallace stood on Deckmont head,
He blew his bugle round,
Till the wild bull in Cadyow wood
Has started at the sound.

Saint George's cross, o'er Bothwell hung,
Was waving far and wide,
And from the lofty turret flung
Its crimson blaze on Clyde;

And rising at the bugle blast
That marked the Scottish foe,
Old England's yeomen mustered fast,
And bent the Norman bow.

Tall in the midst Sir Aylmer rose,
Proud Pembroke's Earl was he —
While — . . . . .