Classic Poem

Allan Ian Òg Macleod of Raasay,
Treasure of mine, lies yonder dead in Loos,
His body unadorned by Highland raiment,
Trammelled, for glorious hours, in Saxon trews.
Never man before of all his kindred
Went so apparelled to the burial knowe,
But with the pleated tartan for his shrouding,
The bonnet on his brow.

My grief! that Allan should depart so sadly,
When no wild mountain pipe his bosom wrung,
With no one of his race beside his shoulder
Who knew his history and spoke his tongue!
Ah! lonely death and drear for darling Allan!
Before his ghost had taken wings and gone,
Loud would he cry in Gaelic to his gallants,
" Children of storm, press on! "

Beside him, when he fell there in his beauty,
Macleods of all the islands should have died;
Brave hearts his English! — but they could not fathom
To what old deeps the voice of Allan cried;
When in that strange French country-side war-battered,
Far from the creeks of home and hills of heath,
A boy, he kept the old tryst of his people
With the dark girl Death.

Oh Allan Ian Òg! Oh Allan aluinn!
Sore is my heart remembering the past,
And you of Raasay's ancient gentle children
The farthest-wandered, kindliest and last!
It should have been the brave dead of the islands
That heard ring o'er their tombs your battle cry,
To shake them from their sleep again, and quicken
Peaks of Torridon and Skye.

Gone in the mist the brave Macleods of Raasay,
Far furth from fortune, sundered from their lands,
And now the last grey stone of Castle Raasay,
Lies desolate and levelled with the sands.

But pluck the old isle from its roots deep-planted
Where tides cry coronach round the Hebrides,
And it will bleed of the Macleods lamented,
Their loves and memories!