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OLISTEN, listen, ladies gay!
No haughty feat of arms I tell:
Soft is the note and Sad the lay
That mourns the lovely Rosabelle.
“Moor, moor the barge, ye gallant crew,
And, gentle ladye, deign to stay!
Rest thee in Castle Ravensheuch,
Nor tempt the stormy firth today
“The blackening wave is edged with white:
To inch and rock the sea-mews fly
The fishers have heard the Wate-Sprite
Whose screams forebode that wreck is nigh.
“Last night the gifted Seer did view
A wet shroud swathed round ladye gay;
Then stay thee, fair, in Ravensheuch:
Why cross the gloomy firth today?
“’Tis not because Lord Lindesay’s heir
To-night at Roslin leads the ball,
But that my ladye-mother there
Sits 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 chide
If ’tis not filled by Rosabelle.
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 copse-wood glen;
’Twas seen from Dryden’s groves of oak,
And seen from caverned Hawthornden.
Seemed all on fire that chapel prou
Where Roslin’s chiefs uncoffined li
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 St. 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 St. 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