Oh, listen, listen, ladies gay!
No haughty feat of arms I tell; Soft is the note, and sad the layThat mourns the lovely Rosabelle.
"Moor, moor the barge, ye gallant crew !
And, gentle lady, deign to stay ! Rest thee in Castle Ravensheuch,Nor tempt the stormy firth to-day.
" The blackening wave is edged with white;
To inch and rock the sea-mews fly; The fishers have heard the water-sprite,Whose screams forebode that wreck is nigh.
"Last night the gifted seer did view
A wet shroud swathed round lady gay; Then stay thee, fair, in Ravensheuch;Why cross the gloomy firth to-day?"" "Tis not because Lord Lindesay"s heir
To-night at Roslin leads the ball, But that my lady mother thereSits lonely in her castle hall.""Tis not because the ring they ride, And Lindesay at the ring rides well,But that my sire the wine will chideIf "tis not filled by Rosabelle. "
Drawn by W.S. Wemyss
"Lindesay at the ring rides well."
O"er Roslin, all that dreary night,
A wondrous blaze was seen to gleam;
"Twas broader than the watch-fire"s light,
And redder than the bright moonbeam.
It glared on Roslin"s castled rock,
It ruddied all the copsewood glen;
" Twas seen from Dryden"s groves of oak, And seen from caverned Hawthornden.
Seemed all on fire that chapel proud, Where Roslin"s chiefs uncoffined lie,Each baron, for a sable shroud, Sheathed in his iron panoply.
Seemed all on fire within, around, Deep sacristy and altar"s pale; Shone every pillar foliage-bound,And glimmered all the dead men"s mail.
Blazed battlement and pinnet high, Blazed every rose-carved buttress fair-So still they blaze, when fate is nigh The lordly line of high Saint Clair.
There are twenty of Roslin"s barons bold Lie buried within that proud chapelle;Each one the holy vault doth hold;- But the sea holds lovely Rosabelle!
And each Saint Clair was buried there With candle, with book, and with knell;But the sea-caves rung, and the wild winds sung The dirge of lovely Rosabelle.
Sir Walter Scott.
Author.-SIR WALTER Scour (1771-1832), the greatest of Scottish novelists and one of the greatest of Scottish poets, was born at Edinburgh. Nearly all of his works deal with history, his chief poems being-The Lay of the Last Minstrel, Marmion, The Lady of the Lake, Rokeby, The Lord of the Isles; his chief prose works Waverley, The Heart of Midlothian, lranhoe, and Quentin Durward. He wrote also a History of Scotland and Tales of a Grandfather. "Scott exalted and purified the novel, and made Scotland known throughout the world."General Notes.-The poem is written in ballad measure; note that lines of four and three stresses alternate. It was Scott"s custom to begem his longer poems, which are rhymed chronicles, with songs and ballads. This one comes in " The Lay of the Last Minstrel" and is supposed to be sung by young Harold from the northern isles, the "bard of brave St. Clair." St. Clair is now Sinclair. Ravensheuch, now a ruin, is in Fifeshire on the north shore of the Firth of Forth ( "the stormy firth"), and Roslinis on the south side. Dryden is near Edinburgh, Hawthornden is a glen on the Esk, near Roslin. Riding the ring meant tilting with the lance at a small suspended ring. An inch is an island. The sacristy is the part of a church where robes and books are kept; the pale is the railing round the altar. A pinnet is a peak or pinnacle of a building. Look up any other hard words in a dictionary, and the places on a map. Why would the song be addressed to ladies? What motive induced Rosabelle to tempt the stormy firth? What was the light that glowed over Roslin? Compare " fearful lights that never beacon save when kings and heroes die"(Aytoun). Why "chapelle" instead of chapel? Name other tragic Poems- "A chieftain to the Highlands bound, " "Harry Dale the Drover," etc. Write the story of Rosabelle in prose, making her father or her lover tell it.
