Glenara

O, heard ye yon pibroch sound sad in the gale,     Where a band cometh slowly with weeping and wail?     'Tis the chief of Glenara laments for his dear;     And her sire and her people are called to her bier.     Glenara came first, with the mourners and shroud;     Her kinsmen they followed, but mourned not aloud;     Their plaids all their bosoms were folded around;     They marched all in silence, they looked on the ground.     In silence they reached, over mountain and moor,     To a heath where the oak-tree grew lonely and hoar;     "Now here let us place the gray stone of her cairn;     Why speak ye no word?" said Glenara the stern.     "And tell me, I charge ye, ye clan of my spouse,     Why fold ye your mantles, why cloud ye your brows?"     So spake the rude chieftain; no answer is made.     But each mantle, unfolding, a dagger displayed.     "I dreamt of my lady, I dreamt of her shroud."     Cried a voice from the kinsmen, all wrathful and loud;     "And empty that shroud and that coffin did seem;     Glenara! Glenara! now read me my dream!"     O, pale grew the cheek of that chieftain, I ween,     When the shroud was unclosed and no lady was seen;     When a voice from the kinsmen spoke louder in scorn,     'Twas the youth who had loved the fair Ellen of Lorn,     "I dreamt of my lady, I dreamt of her grief,     I dreamt that her lord was a barbarous chief;     On a rock of the ocean fair Ellen did seem;     Glenara! Glenara! now read me my dream!"     In dust low the traitor has knelt to the ground,     And the desert revealed where his lady was found;     From a rock of the ocean that beauty is borne;     Now joy to the house of fair Ellen of Lorn.