VIII.
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But ah! dear lady, thus it sighed,The eve thy sainted mother died;And such the sounds which, while I stroveTo 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 woeMy master's house must undergo,Or aught but weal to Ellen fairBrood in these accents of despair,No future bard, sad Harp! shall flingTriumph 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!'
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