’The Minstrel came once more to view
The eastern ridge of Benvenue,
For ere he parted he would say
Farewell to lovely loch Achray
Where shall he find, in foreign land,
So lone a lake, so sweet a strand!—­
There is no breeze upon the fern,
     No ripple on the lake,
Upon her eyry nods the erne,
     The deer has sought the brake;
The small birds will not sing aloud,
     The springing trout lies still,
So darkly glooms yon thunder-cloud,
That swathes, as with a purple shroud,
     Benledi’s distant hill. 
Is it the thunder’s solemn sound
     That mutters deep and dread,
Or echoes from the groaning ground
     The warrior’s measured tread? 
Is it the lightning’s quivering glance
     That on the thicket streams,
Or do they flash on spear and lance
     The sun’s retiring beams?—­
I see the dagger-crest of Mar,
I see the Moray’s silver star,
Wave o’er the cloud of Saxon war,
That up the lake comes winding far!

     To hero boune for battle-strife,
          Or bard of martial lay,
     ’Twere worth ten years of peaceful life,
          One glance at their array!

XVI.

’Their light-armed archers far and near
     Surveyed the tangled ground,
Their centre ranks, with pike and spear,
     A twilight forest frowned,
Their barded horsemen in the rear
     The stern battalia crowned. 
No cymbal clashed, no clarion rang,
     Still were the pipe and drum;
Save heavy tread, and armor’s clang,
     The sullen march was dumb. 
There breathed no wind their crests to shake,
     Or wave their flags abroad;
Scarce the frail aspen seemed to quake
     That shadowed o’er their road. 
Their vaward scouts no tidings bring,
     Can rouse no lurking foe,
Nor spy a trace of living thing,
     Save when they stirred the roe;
The host moves like a deep-sea wave,
Where rise no rocks its pride to brave
     High-swelling, dark, and slow. 
The lake is passed, and now they gain
A narrow and a broken plain,
Before the Trosachs’ rugged jaws;
And here the horse and spearmen pause
While, to explore the dangerous glen
Dive through the pass the archer-men.

XVII.

’At once there rose so wild a yell
Within that dark and narrow dell,
As all the fiends from heaven that fell
Had pealed the banner-cry of hell! 
     Forth from the pass in tumult driven,
     Like chaff before the wind of heaven,
          The archery appear: 
     For life! for life! their flight they ply—­
     And shriek, and shout, and battle-cry,
     And plaids and bonnets waving high,
     And broadswords flashing to the sky,
          Are maddening in the rear. 
     Onward they drive in dreadful race,