What avails a saddened brow? 
  Heart, man, heart! we need it sorely,
    Never half so much, as now. 
  Had we but a thousand troopers,
    Had we but a thousand more! 
  Noble Perth, I hear them coming!—­
    Hark! the English cannons’ roar. 
  God! how awful sounds that volley,
    Bellowing through the mist and rain! 
  Was not that the Highland slogan? 
    Let me hear that shout again! 
  Oh, for prophet eyes to witness
    How the desperate battle goes! 
  Cumberland!  I would not fear thee,
    Could my Camerons see their foes. 
  Sound, I say, the charge at venture—­
    ’Tis not naked steel we fear;
  Better perish in the melee
    Than be shot like driven deer;
  Hold! the mist begins to scatter! 
    There in front ’tis rent asunder,
  And the cloudy bastion crumbles
    Underneath the deafening thunder;
  There I see the scarlet gleaming! 
    Now, Macdonald—­now or never!—­
  Woe is me, the clans are broken! 
    Father, thou art lost for ever! 
  Chief and vassal, lord and yeoman,
    There they lie in heaps together,
  Smitten by the deadly volley,
    Rolled in blood upon the heather;
  And the Hanoverian horsemen,
    Fiercely riding to and fro,
  Deal their murderous strokes at random.—­
    Ah, my God! where am I now? 
  Will that baleful vision never
    Vanish from my aching sight? 
  Must those scenes and sounds of terror
    Haunt me still by day and night? 
  Yea, the earth hath no oblivion
    For the noblest chance it gave,
  None, save in its latest refuge—­
    Seek it only in the grave! 
  Love may die, and hatred slumber,
    And their memory will decay,
  As the watered garden recks not
    Of the drought of yesterday;
  But the dream of power once broken,
    What shall give repose again? 
  What shall charm the serpent-furies
    Coiled around the maddening brain? 
  What kind draught can nature offer
    Strong enough to lull their sting? 
  Better to be born a peasant
    Than to live an exiled king! 
  Oh, these years of bitter anguish!—­
    What is life to such as me,
  With my very heart as palsied
    As a wasted cripple’s knee! 
  Suppliant-like for alms depending
    On a false and foreign court,
  Jostled by the flouting nobles,
    Half their pity, half their sport. 
  Forced to hold a place in pageant,
    Like a royal prize of war,
  Walking with dejected features
    Close behind his victor’s car,
  Styled an equal—­deemed a servant—­
    Fed with hopes of future gain—­
  Worse by far is fancied freedom
    Than the captive’s clanking chain! 
  Could I change this gilded bondage
    Even for the dusky tower,
  Whence King James beheld his lady
    Sitting in the castle bower;
  Birds around her sweetly singing,