第43章 VIII.

'But ah! dear lady, thus it sighed, The eve thy sainted mother died;And such the sounds which, while I strove To wake a lay of war or love, Came marring all the festal mirth, Appalling me who gave them birth, And, disobedient to my call, Wailed loud through Bothwell's bannered hall.

Ere Douglases, to ruin driven, Were exiled from their native heaven.--O! if yet worse mishap and woe My master's house must undergo, Or aught but weal to Ellen fair Brood in these accents of despair, No future bard, sad Harp! shall fling Triumph or rapture from thy string;One short, one final strain shall flow, Fraught with unutterable woe, Then shivered shall thy fragments lie, Thy master cast him down and die! '