Green Flodden! on thy bloodstained head
Descend no rain or vernal dew;
But still, thou charnel of the dead,
May whitening bones thy surface strew!
Soon as I tread thy rush-clad vale,
Wild fancy feels the clasping mail;
The rancour of a thousand years
Glows in my breast; again I burn
To see the banner’d pomp of war return,
And mark, beneath the moon, the silver light of spears.
Lo! bursting from their common tomb,
The spirits of the ancient dead
Dimly streak the parted gloom
With awful faces, ghastly red;
As once, around their martial king,
They closed the death-devoted ring,
With dauntless hearts, unknown to yield;
In slow procession round the pile
Of heaving corses, moves each shadowy file,
And chants, in solemn strain, the dirge of Flodden Field.
What youth, of graceful form and mien,
Foremost leads the spectred brave,
While o’er his mantle’s folds of green
His amber locks redundant wave?
When slow returns the fated day,
That viewed their chieftain’s long array,
Wild to the harp’s deep plaintive string,
The virgins raise the funeral strain,
From Ord’s black mountain to the northern main,
And mourn the emerald hue which paints the vest of spring!
Alas! that Scottish maid should sing
The combat where her lover fell!
That Scottish bard should wake the string,
The triumph of our foes to tell!
Yet Teviot’s sons, with high disdain,
Have kindled at the thrilling strain,
That mourn’d their martial fathers’ bier;
And at the sacred font, the priest
Through ages left the master-hand unblessed,
To urge, with keener aim, the blood-encrusted spear.
Red Flodden! when thy plaintive strain
In early youth rose soft and sweet,
My life-blood, through each throbbing vein,
With wild tumultuous passion beat;
And oft in fancied might, I trode
The spear-strewn path to Fame’s abode,
Encircled with a sanguine flood;
And thought I heard the mingling hum,
When, croaking hoarse, the birds of carrion come
Afar, on rustling wing, to feast on English blood.
Rude Border Chiefs, of mighty name,
And iron soul, who sternly tore
The blossoms from the tree of fame,
And purpled deep their tints with gore,
Rush from brown ruins, scarr’d with age,
That frown o’er haunted Hermitage;
Where, long by spells mysterious bound,
They pace their round, with lifeless smile,
And shake, with restless foot, the guilty pile,
Till sink the mouldering towers beneath the burdened ground.
Shades of the dead! on Alfer’s plain
Who scorned with backward step to move,
But struggling ’mid the hills of slain,
Against the Sacred Standard strove;
Amid the lanes of war I trace
Each broad claymore and ponderous mace:
Where’er the surge of arms is tost,
Your glittering spears, in close array,
Sweep, like the spider’s filmy web, away
The flower of Norman pride, and England’s victor host.
But distant fleets each warrior ghost,
With surly sounds that murmur far;
Such sounds were heard when Syria’s host
Roll’d from the walls of proud SamÀr.
Around my solitary head
Gleam the blue lightnings of the dead,
While murmur low the shadowy band—
‘Lament no more the warrior’s doom!
Blood, blood alone, should dew the hero’s tomb,
Who falls, ’mid circling spears, to save his native land.’
John Leyden.
