'Short be my speech; -- nor time affords, Nor my plain temper, glozing words.
Kinsman and father,--if such name Douglas vouchsafe to Roderick's claim;Mine honored mother;--Ellen,--why, My cousin, turn away shine eye?--And Graeme, in whom I hope to know Full soon a noble friend or foe, When age shall give thee thy command, And leading in thy native land,--List all!--The King's vindictive pride Boasts to have tamed the Border-side, Where chiefs, with hound and trawl; who came To share their monarch's sylvan game, Themselves in bloody toils were snared, And when the banquet they prepared, And wide their loyal portals flung, O'er their own gateway struggling hung.
Loud cries their blood from Meggat's mead, From Yarrow braes and banks of Tweed, Where the lone streams of Ettrick glide, And from the silver Teviot's side;The dales, where martial clans did ride, Are now one sheep-walk, waste and wide.
This tyrant of the Scottish throne, So faithless and so ruthless known, Now hither comes; his end the same, The same pretext of sylvan game.
What grace for Highland Chiefs, judge ye By fate of Border chivalry.
Yet more; amid Glenfinlas' green, Douglas, thy stately form was seen.
This by espial sure I know:
Your counsel in the streight I show.'
