Macodrum, whose real patronymic is understood to have been Macdonald, lived to lament his patron in elegiac strains—a fact that brings the time in which he flourished down to 1766.
His poem entitled the “Song of Age,” is admired by his countrymen for its rapid succession of images (a little too mixed or abrupt on some occasions), its descriptive power, and its neatness and flow of versification.
ORAN NA H-AOIS,
THE SONG OF AGE.
Should my numbers essay to
enliven a lay,
The notes would
betray the languor of woe;
My heart is o’erthrown,
like the rush of the stone
That, unfix’d
from its throne, seeks the valley below.
The veteran of war,
that knows not to spare,
And offers us
ne’er the respite of peace,
Resistless comes on, and we
yield with a groan,
For under the
sun is no hope of release.
’Tis a sadness I ween,
how the glow and the sheen
Of the rosiest
mien from their glory subside;
How hurries the hour on our
race, that shall lower
The arm of our
power, and the step of our pride.
As scatter and fail, on the
wing of the gale,
The mist of the
vale, and the cloud of the sky,
So, dissolving our bliss,
comes the hour of distress,
Old age, with
that face of aversion to joy.
Oh! heavy of head, and silent
as lead,
And unbreathed
as the dead, is the person of Age;
Not a joint, not a nerve—so
prostrate their verve—
In the contest
shall serve, or the feat to engage.
To leap with the best, or
the billow to breast,
Or the race prize
to wrest, were but effort in vain;
On the message of death pours
an Egypt of wrath,[127]
The fever’s
hot breath, the dart-shot of pain.
Ah, desolate eld! the wretch
that is held
By thy grapple,
must yield thee his dearest supplies;
The friends of our love at
thy call must remove,—
What boots how
they strove from thy bands to arise?
They leave us, deplore as
it wills us,—our store,
Our strength at
the core, and our vigour of mind;
Remembrance forsakes us, distraction
o’ertakes us,
Every love that
awakes us, we leave it behind.
Thou spoiler of grace, that
changest the face
To hasten its
race on the route to the tomb,
To whom nothing is dear, unaffection’d
the ear,
Emotion is sere,
and expression is dumb;
Of spirit how void, thy passions
how cloy’d,
Thy pith how destroy’d,
and thy pleasure how gone!
To the pang of thy cries not
an echo replies,
Even sympathy
dies—and thy helper is none.
We see thee how stripp’d
of each bloom that equipp’d
Thy flourish,
till nipp’d the winter thy rose;
Till the spoiler made bare
the scalp of the hair,
And the ivory[128]