Canto Fourth.

I.

WEET Teviot! on thy silver tide

The glaring bale-fires blaze no more; No longer steel-clad warriors ride

Along thy wild and willow'd shore; Where'er thou wind'st, by dale or hill,

All, all is peaceful, all is still,

As if thy waves, since Time was born, Since first they roll'd upon the Tweed, Had only heard the shepherd's reed,

Nor started at the bugle-horn.

II.

Unlike the tide of human time,

Which, though it change in ceaseless flow, Retains each grief, retains each crime

Its earliest course was doom'd to know;
And, darker as it downward bears,
Is stain'd with past and present tears.
Low as that tide has ebb'd with me,

It still reflects to Memory's eye
The hour my brave, my only boy,

Fell by the side of great Dundee.
Why, when the volleying musket play'd
Against the bloody Highland blade,
Why was not I beside him laid?—
Enough he died the death of fame;

Enough he died with conquering Græme.

III.

Now over Border, dale and fell,

Full wide and far was terror spread;
For pathless marsh, and mountain cell,
The peasant left his lowly shed.
The frighten'd flocks and herds were pent
Beneath the peel's rude battlement;
And maids and matrons dropp'd the tear,
While ready warriors seized the spear.

K

From Branksome's towers, the watchman's eye,

Dun wreaths of distant smoke can spy,

Which, curling in the rising sun,
Show'd southern ravage was begun.

IV.

Now loud the heedful gate-ward cried-
"Prepare ye all for blows and blood!
Watt Tinlinn, from the Liddel-side,
Comes wading through the flood.
Full oft the Tynedale snatchers knock
At his lone gate, and prove the lock;
It was but last St. Barnabright
They sieged him a whole summer night,
But fled at morning; well they knew,
In vain he never twang'd the yew.
Right sharp has been the evening shower,
That drove him from his Liddel tower;
And, by my faith," the gate-ward said,
"I think 'twill prove a Warden-Raid."

V.

While thus he spoke, the bold yeoman
Enter'd the echoing barbican.

He led a small and shaggy nag,

That through a bog, from hag to hag,
Could bound like any Billhope stag.