Douglas, in the moonless night
--_Muffled oars on blue Loch Leven!_--
Took her hand, a flake of white
--_Beauty slides the bolts of heaven._--
Little white hand, like a flake of snow,
When they saw it, his Highland crew
Swung together and murmured low,
"Douglas, wilt _thou_ die then, too?"
And the pine trees whispered, weeping,
"_Douglas, Douglas, tender and true!_
Little white hand like a tender moonbeam, soon shall you set the
broadswords leaping,
It is the Queen, the Queen!" they whispered, watching her soar to
the saddle anew.
"There will be trumpets blown in the mountains, a mist of blood on the
heather, and weeping,
Weeping, weeping, and _thou_, too, dead for her, Douglas, Douglas,
tender and true."

II

Carry the queenly lass along!
--_Cold she lies, cold and dead,_--
She whose laughter was a song,
--_Lapped around with sheets of lead!_--
She whose blood was wine of the South,
--_Light her down to a couch of clay!_--
And a royal rose her mouth,
And her body made of may!
--Lift your torches, weeping, weeping,
Light her down to a couch of clay.
They should have left her in her vineyards, left her heart to her
land's own keeping,
Left her white breast room to breathe, and left her light foot
free to dance!

Hush! Between the solemn pinewoods, carry the lovely lady sleeping,
Out of the cold grey Northern mists, with banner and scutcheon,
plume, and lance,
Carry her southward, palled in purple, weeping, weeping, weeping, weeping,--
_O, ma patrie,
La plus cherie,
Adieu, plaisant pays de France!_

Well, sirs, that dark tide rose within my brain!
I snatched his keys and flung them over the hedge,
Then flung myself down on a bank of ferns
And wept and wept and wept.
It puzzled him.
Perchance he feared my mind was going and yet,
O, sirs, if you consider it rightly now,
With all those ages knocking at his doors,
With all that custom clamouring for his care,
Is it so strange a grave-digger should weep?
Well--he was kind enough and heaped my plate
That