Blair Collection > Celtic magazine > Volume 2

^30 THE CELTIC MAGAZINI:.
YIII.
But -when NoveniLer, bleak and wan,
With moaning winds wound up tlie year,
Then rose tlie dim and dripping dawn,
Tliat saw our people disappear —
Saw thirty families close their door,
And leave the Glen for evermore.
Ah ! then the grief, long inly pent,
From many a breaking heart found vent,
In one wild agony of lament ;
Old men, and bairns of tender years,
Mingling their crying and their tears,
The wail of a forlorn leave-taking.
As though an hundred hearts were breaking.
And love and hope the world forsaking.
By afternoon onr people crept.
Past Achnacarry slow, and wept.
Lochiel was gentle and humane.
As all his race before — •
To see aught living suffer pain.
It grieved his kind heart sore.
And he, the Chief, was by that day.
As our poor people wound their way
Down the Pass called * The Darksome Mile ;'
And when from out the deep defile,
The sounds of men and cattle brake.
He to the factor turned and spake —
' Whose lowing kine are these I hear 1
What means this bleating in mine ear V
But when the factor answered, ' They
Are the people from Glendesseray,'
Lochiel, though mild, with anger burned,
And on the factor sternly turned —
* You told me they were abjects all,
Leading a squalid, hopeless life —
I never pauj^ers knew withal,
Have store of sheep and kine so rife;
Would that I ne'er thy face had known,
Ere thus Avith all the past I broke,
And drove from homes that were their own.
These leal and simple-hearted foUc !
This deed, Avhich you have made me do.
Until my dying day I'll rue.'
IX.
Well might he rue it, he had driven.
Forth from the homes to which they clave,
Without a home or hope but heaven,
Xwo huudied hearts that would have given,